Talk:Prem Rawat/scholars

Chryssides

Chryssides, George D., Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, Scarecrow Press (2001) ISBN 0-8108-4095-2

TBD

Barrett

Barrett, David V., The New Believers: A Survey of Sects, Cults and Alternative Religions (2003), Cassel, ISBN 1-84403-040-7

Page 65

"The Guru Maharaj Ji was only 13 when he sprang to prominence as leader of the Divine Light Mission, now Elan Vital, in 1971. [...] ALthough he is still actively involved in the movement he has changed focus, has stepped back from the traditional Hindu position of guru, has dropped many of not all of the Hindu trappings. [...] Because the founder himself has made such sweeping changes, the movement is less strongly focussed on him than it previously was, and thus is perhaps more likely to continue relatively changed after his death."

Pages 325-329 Chapter "Eastern Movements in the West"

Opening paragraph

Like several of other religious movements which were popular in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, Ean Vital has moved on from his origins. Originally the flamboyant and definitively Eastern-inspired Divine Light Mission, it has matured into something new, changing its name to reflect its current emphasis and approach and, presumably, to distance itself from the past. It might now be thought of a 'spiritual personal development movement' teaching meditation techniques; it is included in this section because of its origins, rather than its current teachings.

Next section

History

(Nothing new here, all is covered already in the article, mainly the disengagement from his mother, marriage, change of emphasis, closing of ashrams. One passage on the role of Prem Rawat and DLM and Elan Vital says: "She [Heather Evans, EV UK speakperson], stresses that Maharaji himself did not set up either the Divine Light Mission or its successor Elan Vital 'the registered charity that promotes Maharaji's teachings. He has never had an official or formal role in the Elan Vital organizations established around the world.'"

Next section

Beliefs and practices

"Elan Vital has now dropped all of its original Eastern religious practices. [...] Unusually, the fact that Maharaji came from a lineage of 'Perfect Masters' is no longer relevant to the rewformed movement. This is not where the authority comes from, nor the recognitin of Maharaji as the master by his student; this comes rather from the nature of the teaching nd its benefit to the individual."

[...]

"The Divine Light movement used to be criticized for the devotion given to Maharaji, who was though to live a life of luxury on the donations of his followers; Whittaker, clearly conscious of past criticism, is emphatic that Maharaji has never earned anything from Elan Vital or any other movement promoting his teachings.[...] At the heart of Elan Vital is this Knowledge — loosely, the joy of true self-knowledge. [...] The Knowledge includes four meditation techniques; these have some similarities in other Sant-Mat-derived movements, and may derive originally from surat shab yoga. [...]The experience is on individual, subjective experience rather than on a body ofd dogma, and in its Divine Light days the movement was sometime criticized for this stressing of emotional experience over intellect. The teaching could perhaps best described as practical mysticism.

[...] In the UK Elan Vital is a very small operation, with only three or four full-time staff, depending very much on volunteer hep and funding. As a charity, it 'provides the legal framework and support structure for the personal teaching between master and student to take place.' It presents vide screenings and satellite broadcasts of Maharaji's talks around Britain, and arranges for his teaching tours.

Derks and Lans 1984

"Subgroups in Divine Light Mission Membership: A Comment on Downton" by Frans Derks and Jan M. van der Lans in the book Of Gods and Men: New Religious Movements in the West. edited by Eileen Barker. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, (1984), ISBN 0-86554-095-0 pages 303-308

copyright © 1983 Mercer University Press

You are welcome to provide a few cites from this material, if you have it available, but please do not link to pages that are unreliable and that carry copyright violations. Thanks. ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 16:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The source is accurate. I checked it. Andries 16:59, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Through contacts with Divine Light Mission members, they heard about the movement. They were struck by the differences between their own unsuccessful attempts to live the spiritual life and the sense of joy, peace, and commitment in the behavior of members. This behavior made them open to accept the movement's problem solving perspective and influenced them to join the movement. They did so, and at that moment their locus of identity shifted from their ego to their spiritual self. Because Divine Light Mission equates the spiritual self with God and with Guru Maharaj Ji, this shift implied surrender to the guru. They became "devotees" and increased their investments in, and sacrifices for, the movement. Their final sacrifice is "mortification of the ego," because it implies a total modification of identity. It is the final stage of surrender that results in total adherence to the movement.

[..]

These changes in membership characteristics coincided with organizational and ideological changes within the movement (which are extensively described in Downton, 1979: 185 210). After 1975 the movement appealed to a different kind of person, because it came to emphasize other elements in its ideology. The pre 1975 members had joined the movement because they had been attracted by Divine Light Mission's Hinduistic ideology that offered them an opportunity to legitimate their already existing rejection of the Western utilitarian world view. However, in 1975 there was a schism within the movement. Guru Maharaj Ji's mother did not approve of his marriage to his American secretary and dismissed him as the movement's leader. The American and European adherents did not accept his dismissal and remained faithful to him. The movement split up into an Eastern and Western branch. The Western branch tried to smother its Hinduistic background and started to emphasize Guru Maharaj Ji as a personification of ideology. This change in ideology may. be illustrated by the fact that since then, Guru Maharaj Ji's father, Shri Hans, the movement's founder, became less important and was much less referred to in the movement's journal. It may further be illustrated by the differences in initiation policy before and after 1975. Before 1975 it was sufficient to have a desperate longing for "Knowledge" (in the sense Divine Light Mission uses this term); after 1975 one had to accept Guru Maharaj Ji as a personal saviour in order to become a member.

Downton

• Downton, James V. Sacred Journeys: The Conversion of Young Americans to Divine Light Mission. Columbia University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-231-04198-5

p 2

Luxury and service were his birthright and later became his peronal life-style when he was elevated to his father's position as Perfect Master at the age of eight.

p5

Reports in the media were unfavorable, repeating often that he seemed to live more like a king than a Messiah.

Chapter 12 "Changes in the Movement" p ???

The end of 1973 saw Guru Maharaj Ji breaking away from his mother and his Indian past. He declared himself the sole source of spiritual authority in the Mission. And, unlike some gurus who have come to this country and have easternized their followers, he became more fully westernized, which premies interpreted as an attempt to integrate his spiritual teachings into our culture.

p ???

Nearly sixteen, he was ready to assume a more active part in deciding what direction the movement should take. This of course meant that he had to encroach on his mother's territory and, given the fact that she was accustomed to having control, a fight was inevitable.

p ???

The guru had inspired greater autonomy by saying in January 1976: 'Don't expect that all these premies who are in the ashram right now are going to stay in the ashram. I hope they don't.' This comment had the effect of producing a widespread exodus from the ashrams that year, which gave rise to an individualistic attitude ... Changes in terminology were made in an attempt to divorce the Mission from its Indian trappings. 'Festivals' became 'regional conferences.' 'Holy Company,' a term used to describe the state of being in the presence of other premies, fell from use, as did the customary Indian greeting.

p ???

[1976] The staff in Denver was 250 just a couple of months ago. Now it is 80.

p 187-8

First, there was the claim by the Indian government that Guru Maharaj Ji and his family had smuggled jewels and large sums of money into the country, a charge which was eventually dropped with the apologies from the government.

p 188

Then, of course, there were the numerous newspaper accounts of the guru's life-style, which pictured him as more interested in accumulating wealth and power than in changing the world.

p 199–200

During 1971, there were social forces encouraging the development of millenarian beliefs within the Mission. They were developed in part by the carryover of millennial thinking from the counterculture; by the psychological trappings of surrender and idealization; by the guru's mother, whose satsang was full of references to his divine nature; and partly by the guru, himself, for letting others cast him in the role of the Lord. Given the social pressures within the premie community which reinforced these beliefs, there was little hope premies would be able to relax the hold that their beliefs and concepts had over them. [...] Although there were still residues of belief in his divinity, in 1976, the vast majority [of premies] viewed the guru primarily as their spiritual teacher, guide , and inspiration. [...] Having quit imputing great powers to Guru Maharaj Ji by the end of 1976, premies assumed much more responsibility for their own spiritual growth. [...] From the beginning, Guru Maharaj Ji appealed to premies to give up their beliefs and concepts so that they might experience the Knowledge, or life force, more fully. This, as I have said, is one of the chief goals of gurus, to transform their followers' perceptions of the world through deconditioning. Yet Guru Maharaj Ji's emphasis on giving up beliefs and concepts did not prevent premies from adopting a fairly rigid set of ideas about his divinity and the coming of a new age.

pp 210–211

Signs of rededication both to Guru Maharaj Ji and the inner guru became quite apparent. Most of the premies who left the ashrams in the summer of 1976 began to return in 1977, when more than 600 signed up to enter the ashrams in just a few months' time. ... To the surprise of everyone who had come to the Atlantic City program at the close of 1976, Guru Maharaj Ji appeared in his Krishna costume, a majestic looking robe and crown he had not worn since 1975. The sight of him in his ceremonial best brought premies to their feet singing, as nostalgia for the early days caught them up in feelings of devotion once more. ... With so many premies coming out in support of devotion, there has been a shift away from secular tendencies back to ritual and messianic beliefs and practices ... elevating the guru to a much greater place in their practice of the Knowledge.

DuPertuis

Note: this scholar is (or was) a follower of Prem Rawat

• "How People Recognize Charisma: The Case of Darshan in Radhasoami and Divine Light Mission" Lucy DuPertuis, University of Guam,Sociological Analysis 1986, 47, 2.111-124

Charisma in Sant Mat / Radhasoami / DLM tradition can best be understood in terms of darshan for which, according to Bharati, "absolutely no parallel" can be found "in any religious act in the West . . . " (1970:161, cited in Eck, 1981:5). Darshan means "sight" - of the deity or the guru who embodies him/her, usually for the purpose of imbibing his/her divine powers or grace (Babb, 1981; Eck:1981). It implies sight on a rich multiplicity of symbolic and spiritual levels which demonstrate a complex mix of doctrinal and mythic, perceptual and visionary, interactional and experiential dimensions in the relationship between a charismatic spiritual leader and his or her followers.

Darshan is intimately related to what Lane describes as "three cardinal precepts" of Sant Mat tradition:

1) Satguru, both as the Absolute Lord (nirguna) and the living human master (saguna):

2) Shabd (sound or melody), which encompasses both that which is spoken or written and inner or spiritual sound which is beyond expression, the primal current of the Supreme Lord; and

3) Satsang, the congregation of earnest devotees of the truth (l981:12).

Satguru is the one who is seen in darshan; shabd provides the spiritual method for perceiving darshan; and in satsang devotees exchange "darshan stories." (10) With minor modifications these ideas have also guided Radhasoami and DLM.

Theologically, Satguru exemplifies the Hindu concept of the Absolute as both with and without form. As living human master Satguru does not merely represent the Absolute Lord, but Satguru is that Lord's form, or embodiment, or incarnation: (11) simultaneously, even as he sits before the devotees in the form of a living master, Satguru is also "non-dual, un-namable, and formless" (Lane, 1981:12). To Kabir, this Lord's "form is love" and "all light" [Tagore, 1977:1 13,75). Radhasoami means "Absolute Lord," whose form " . . . is without limits and beyond description. To what could I compare it? It is beyond all measure." (Singh, 1976:2:35-6, cited in Babb, 1981:390). Guru Maharaj Ji sometimes described this "Lord" or "God" as impersonal energy, at other times as the creator.

Devotees do not distinguish conceptually between formless and human manifestations of Satguru, for the goal is to perceive darshan of both at once. One must learn to see the formless Satguru via the master's physical form just as - in a favorite example used by Guru Maharaj Ji - Krishna on the battlefield suddenly revealed to his disciple Arjuna his transcendent, divine Form, speaking from innumerable mouths, seeing with myriad eyes, of many marvellous aspects . . ., annointed with perfumes of heavenly fragrance, full of revelations, resplendent, boundless, of ubiquitous regard (Prabhavanda and Isherwood, 1951:92).

Thus, the devotee can "now see his guru as he truly is; that is, as the Supreme Being." (Babb, 1981:390).

The quest for darshan can begin with either of two methods. If one starts by seeking darshan of the formless Satguru, one meditates, while darshan of the human Satguru involves a ritual encounter.

Foss & Larkin

Worshipping the Absurd 'The Negation of Social Causality among the Followers of Guru Maharaj Ji.' Article by Daniel Foss and Larkin in Sociological Analysis, 1978.

'This paper is the result of a two-and-a-half year participant-observation study in which the authors analyze the basis of Guru Maharaj Ji's appeal to ex-movement participants in the early 1970s. The youth movement of the 1960s had generated a reinterpretation of reality that called into question conventional reality. When the movement declined, the movement interpretation had no possibility for implementation. Left between a reality they rejected and one that could not be implemented, ex-movement participants experienced life as arbitrary and senseless. Guru Maharaj Ji was deified as the mirror of an incomprehensible, meaningless universe. The Divine Light Mission stripped his followers of all notions of causality while simultaneously subsuming and repudiating both conventional and movement interpretations of reality. '

'In the wake of the 1960s youth movement, a plethora of organizations arose to serve the contradictory needs of ex-movement activists. As movement participants, they had rejected the conventional interpretation of reality that pervaded the strata of their elders and superiors. (For documentation of the conflicts between "straight" or dominant reality and the reality of youth dissidents see Foss, 1973; Roszak, 1969, 1972; Flacks, 1971; Foss and Larkin, 1976; Larkin, 1974; Hoffman, 1968, 1969; Wieder and Zimmerman, 1976.) Yet as the movement waned in the early 1970s, the 'freak' or movement interpretation of reality which they constructed in opposition to dominant society became insupportable. Many former movement participants flocked to organizations which purported to solve the problems of youth caught between lives they despised and lives they could not live. We call these organizations 'post-movement groups,' since they arose in response to the decline of the movement (see Foss and Larkin, 1976, 1977). These groups took several forms: Marxist sectarian "vanguard parties," religious sects of Christian and Oriental provenance, and authoritarian communes and "families." In this paper, we will explore the purpose and operation of one such group: the Divine Light Mission of the Teenage Perfect Master and Lord of the Universe, Guru Maharaj Ji. The Divine Light Mission was archetypal of the post-movement groups, since it was able to recruit from all segments of the youth culture population: political radicals, acid-head 'freaks' (cultural radicals), communards, street people, rock musicians, dropouts, and 'inhibited' types, who, upon flirtation with drugs or some other aspect of dissidence, recoiled in reaction.'

'The Divine Light Mission achieved prominence in 1973-74, receiving a substantial amount of coverage in the print and electronic media. Its festival in November 1973 - called Millenium '73 - was held in the Houston Astrodome and was the youth culture event of the year. It received coverage by local, national and international press and was the subject of a documentary shown on the public television network. As it achieved notoriety, the Mission alternatively became the focus of public outrage and ridicule. It stood accused of 'brainwashing' America's youth and turning them into 'zombies'. There were several instances in which the famed 'deprogrammer', Ted Patrick, attempted to kidnap devotees and 'deprogram' them. The remnants of the New Left claimed that the Mission was a 'proto-fascist' group with a potential for violence and terrorist activities. Guru Maharaj Ji's penchant for high priced consumer items, expensive cars, and self-contradictory behavior was chronicled in the 'People' or 'Newsmakers' sections of the newsweeklies and the New York Times. Televised network news programs often used the strange activities of the Divine Light Mission and Guru Maharaj Ji as 'kickers', light stories of humorous content to end the program.'

'All of these characterizations have an element of truth in them. However, the essential mystery of the Mission eluded not only the observations of the media, but most of the premies as well. In an attempt to understand the fundamental reasons for the existence of the Divine Light Mission, the authors observed and participated in its activities over a period of two-and-a-half years from May 1973 to the end of 1975, meticulously documenting Mission events. In addition to attendance at weekly meetings of the New York-New Jersey area Mission, we visited their headquarters in Denver for several days, attended regional and national festivals, interviewed premies nationwide, including dignitaries and policy-makers, learned the secret meditation techniques, read all Mission magazines, newspapers, bulletins and leaflets, read popular and professional literature pertaining to the Divine Light Mission, and related groups, and studied Hindu theology. '

/.../ 'As they cut their hair, eschewed the hedonism of the earlier era, and conventionalized their behavior to conform to the demand of straight society, they did so in the name of Guru Maharaj Ji, who was worshiped for his seemingly nonsensical and unpredictable behavior. In order to minimize the pain (see Festiger et al., 1956, on psychic pain generated by unsupportable reality systems) generated by the conflicting interpretations of reality in straight" society and from the movement, the Mission systematically stripped its members of all notions of causality and offered its own view of the universe that emphasized formal structure without substantive content. /.../ 'Those who founded the Divine Light Mission or joined it during 1971-72 were former freaks. As "freaks" they had, during the 1960s, internalized the standard "Movement" conception of the repressive corporate-fascist-pig-bureaucracy." But now, as "servants" of the Teenage Perfect Master, Guru Maharaj Ji, they proceeded to build and manage an organization which became, during 1972-73, a veritable parody of that conception: The Mission enjoined upon its organizational core a strict regimentation of everyday life. It banned drugs and established an order of celibate-renunciates. It enforced hair and dress codes and fostered servility and obedience in lower-level operatives.'

'By 1973, the Mission had developed a centralized bureaucracy with a rampant titleism and a penchant for office forms and organizational charts. /.../ 'The significance of the activities of the Mission lay in 'service' to and execution of the 'Divine Plan' of Guru Maharaj Ji, Perfect Master and Lord of the Universe. But Guru Maharaj Ji was himself a supremely incongruous divinity: chubby, squat, enamored of expensive cars and other gadgets, and in no way saintly in his dealings with followers.'

'Yet it this very implausibility which constituted a major factor in Guru Maharaj Ji's appeal to his adoring followers: having repudiated or become estranged from the conventional ("straight) interpretation of social reality, they could not adopt the "freak" reinterpretation of social reality, as it presented a declining promise of fulfillment. Society was therefore something merely factitious, making no sense. Guru Maharaj Ji accordingly represented the ideal embodiment of the universe, since he was himself so manifestly preposterous.'

'Since the prospective premies came to the Mission in a state of confusion and despair, it maintained a strong emotional appeal by deifying the incomprehensibility of the material world, while at the same time providing an ideology which guaranteed that, through rigorous discipline, one would learn the ultimate meaning of life. However, in order to learn such an important (and eternal, we might add) lesson, one had to accept Guru Maharaj Ji as Lord of the Universe and learn to speak and think in satsang language (Satsang refers to the discourse given by the Holy Family and devotees. Premies informally use satsang in talking to each other. It also refers to more formalized services held by the Mission for purposes of recruitment and reaffirming the faith of the followers), which was the foundation of a non-causal belief system. In order to understand how such an act led to the suspension of causality, we must examine the persona of Guru Maharaj Ji.'

Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji?

'Guru Maharaj Ji is held to be the personification, embodiment, and perfect mirror of the premie's experience of the universe. The Perfect Master is ambiguous, self-contradictory, absurd, capricious, self-indulgent, and arbitrary in everything he does - at least to all outward appearances. But he is hardly expected to be plausible or even to make any sense at all. 'He just is the way He is,' as one premie put it. /.../

'Troubled premies are counseled to hand over their problems to Guru Maharaj Ji and say, 'Here, Lord, you take it, I can't handle this.' The efficacy of this device lies, we believe, in its invitation to premies to symbolically exorcise their inner conflicts by projecting them upon an external figure, that of Guru Maharaj Ji, who personifies all contradiction, unifies all opposites, and must be in control of everything since everything is out of control. Guru Maharaj Ji exemplifies and acts out of the perceived orneriness, capriciousness, and moral obtuseness of the universe with great skill. He is the obvious and logical depository for any inner turmoil which cannot be resolved by the individual alone.

'Guru Maharaj Ji is aware of his preposterous image and skillfully manipulates it. To the general public it is the height of ridicule to believe that a 'fat little rich kid' with a taste for a luxurious living and expensive gadgets - and who, on top of everything, married his secretary, a woman eight years older than himself - could be the Perfect Master:

I mean, it's like man is big surprise, you know, people talking about surprises, but I think Perfect Master is the biggest surprise. And people make a concept of a Perfect Master, he's going to be like this, no he's going to be like this, no he's going to be like this. And then he comes. He's completely different and as a matter of fact surprises the world so much, surprises everybody so much they don't think he is (from satsang concluding Guru Puja 74, Amherst, Mass.).

/.../ 'The premie-to-be brings to the Mission a weak sense of social causality based on an image of society characterized by utter senselessness. Within the Mission he is exposed to the satsang language embodying a mode of thought that accords perfectly with his denial of causality fact, as one learns to think in satsang, one's remaining links with chains of causality outside the realm of the Knowledge are systematically snapped. For causality one substitutes Grace and lila. Neither is 'earned' or 'deserved'. Neither can be analyzed according to any code of morality. Yet both sanctify randomness- which the would-be premie already accepts as the ruling principle at work in society - into a cosmic attribute of divinity. /.../

Some instances of Grace are directly attributable to the actions of Guru Maharaj Ji, as when he Graces a premie with his Darshan [Darshan is a term referring to being in the physical presence of Guru Maharaj Ji. Though Darshan usually refers to the traditional foot-kissing ceremony, it can also designate less formal encounters.] or assigns him to a particularly blissful service. At other times Guru Maharaj Ji intimates that Grace is a miracle or supernatural reward which magnifies the anticipated consequences of virtuous behavior such as hard work or diligent organizing. After Millennium, for instance, the Mission finances were so awash in a sea of red ink that the leadership could only hope for an out-and-out miracle. DLM financial Director Rick Berman described the scene:

"Once we had a board meeting with Maharaj Ji and we had all these reports from him. Michael (Bergman), who was treasurer at the time, said to Maharaj Ji, "I remember just before Millennium you told me that if I had only told you about the money shortage you would have given me grace to get the money together. I'd like to of officially ask for grace now because we really need it!" Maharaj Ji laughed and said, "Don't ask for grace officially because if you do I'll give you what I have in my pocket - two cents. Work hard and grace will come." In the above anecdote Guru Maharaj Ji not only employs the notion of Grace in the old sense that runs, "God helps those who help themselves"; but it is also indicated that he uses it subtly to needle a bureaucrat who has withheld disagreeable news from him.

/.../ 'Belief in the workings of Grace, as we have indicated, fragments what remains of the Knowledge-susceptible individual's already minimal sense of secular causality in society and psychodynamics. While the higher aspects of Grace may be presumed to operate according to unknown cosmic principles, its perceptible manifestations are rather 'chancy'and "expectations" of Grace-the feeling that one is entitled to it-are expressly discouraged. Guru Maharaj Ji, the incarnation of the principle of randomness in the universe, bestows Grace as he Will; but at the same time Guru Maharaj Ji in his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence is raining down Grace in a steady stream. It is fairly usual for a devoted premie to say, "I do not deserve such Grace," even though there are really no fixed principles according to which Grace is "deserved" or not. This attitude is encouraged within the Mission subculture.

'If premies are thankful for the bestowal of Grace which they do not deserve then they should, according to formal logic, complain about lila which they do not deserve either. But formal logic yields to emotional logic; reactions to lila range from a quizzical shrug of the shoulders to positive relish. Even more than Grace, lila embodies a world-view of a capricious, absurd, and random universe, at least in appearances; whatever cosmic laws may govern lila are beyond the capacity of unrealized souls to comprehend. Lila is the prerogative of a divine personage; it is in the nature of the divine personage to exercise that prerogative. Grace is a matter of imputation and interpretation: the premie must ascribe a miraculous quality to blissful experiences and instances of good fortune which an outsider might consider to be the natural consequences of psychic discipline and autosuggestion, or else as sheer coincidence or mundane events of no significance. Lila by contrast is more a matter of definition. For a premie to detect the workings of Grace he must be convinced that the miraculous is indeed in operation-even without any "external manifestations of it being required-while associating it with Guru Maharaj Ji. The occurrence of lila is on the other hand incontestable because something weird or unpleasant has unquestionably occurred, and it remains only to define it as the game-playing of Guru Maharaj Ji.'

'For instance, Guru Maharaj Ji's enjoyment of a lavish material luxury (when celibacy and poverty were enjoined upon ashram residents) has from time to time bean taken for an enormous lila. It is not that the premies find anything the least strange in his collection of cars, planes, Divine Residences, tape machines, and other baubles.'After all, why should they begrudge him a white Mercedes if they would not have felt the same about Janis ("Lord, won'tcha buy me a Mercedes Benz") Joplin. Nevertheless, the flaunting of conspicuous wealth by religious dignitaries is alien to the religious traditions of the middle class from which most premies derive (though not to the religious traditions of the Fundamentalist lower classes, both black and white) and is the object of the contempt and derision of the media, middle-class parents, and rival sects; so the subject kept cropping up in satsang, especially with non-premies around. The premies retorted that it is all lila, a gigantic joke played upon a money-crazed and contraption-collecting society in which Guru Maharaj Ji holds up a mirror to a debased consumer culture. This is proof that he is Perfect Master of this Age.

A Mission fiasco to which Guru Maharaj Ji lent his name could be susceptible to post-facto classification as lila: after the Millennium festival, at which Mission officials predicted an attendance upwards of 100,000 plus extra-terrestrial beings, was in fact attended by a maximum of 35,000 and incurred a debt of over $ 1 million, some premies professed to believe that the prophecies had indeed been fulfilled and that l,000 years of peace had in fact been inaugurated. Others, however, contended that the festival had in fact been lila, a stupendous trick played by Guru Maharaj Ji to teach the premies to avoid having "expectations" even if they derived from Guru Maharaj Ji's own pronouncement; to eschew attachments" to grandiose organizational manifestations and colossal objects in the material world such as the Astrodome; and to remain exclusively centered upon the only Truth, which lies within.

/.../ Thus, the notion of lila surrounds one of the central mysteries of the Mission: Guru Maharaj Ji can do anything he wants, and in so doing, behaves incomprehensibly, exemplifying a universe beyond understanding. The appeal of Guru Maharaj Ji, then, lies in his ability to reject a world that is arbitrary, non-sensical, contradictory, and ridiculous. The worship of the preposterous figure of a "fat, teenage, Indian kid" deifies nonsense. He validates prior experiences of senseless randomness and senseless order in the material world by sponsoring, through the Mission, an alternative society which reproduces and parodies at the same time as it negates through ridicule the very features of social reality which gave rise to the feelings of senselessness in the first place; and then resolves the contradiction in a mystical synthesis by offering in himself an object of worship.

Conclusion

Reacceptance of the conventional interpretation of social reality does not imply a return to the status quo ante. To a greater or lesser degree conventional society has ceased to "make sense" to the former dissident, even as he or she submits to the behavioral dictates of "normal life." The social-movement reinterpretation of social reality also no longer "makes sense" insofar as the material possibilities for following its behavioral dictates in collective action for social transformation no longer exist.

Living in a social world experienced as making no sense is not very pleasant, especially if the counter-sense one has recently made of it has become insupportable. The former dissident needs assurance from some quarter that the social universe is orderly and well-planned, yet understandably resonates to indications that nonsense, randomness, and absurdity reign.

For a brief period in the early 1970s, Divine Light Mission met these contradictory psychic needs of former movement participants. Its doctrines and precepts repudiated explicitly both the conventional interpretation of social reality and the social-movement reinterpretation of social reality; meanwhile the Mission bureaucracy parodied authority relations in the wider society.

The prospective convert was informed by the (apparently) businesslike operatives of the Mission that "Guru Maharaj Ji tells you the meaning and purpose of your life," that "Guru Maharaj Ji has a Divine Plan." Yet Guru Maharaj Ji was manifestly preposterous as a divinity, and prolonged contact with the Mission only served to confirm his role as the deification of the absurd. As converts dedicated their lives to the Mission and the propagation of the secret meditation techniques, they internalized the central concepts of Grace and lila, which reinforced their pre-Knowledge experiences of a world that manifestly made no sense. Thus, divested of the necessity of making sense out of the material world, they could accommodate themselves to the resurgence of dominant institutions by conforming in the name of Guru Maharaj Ji for the purposes of spreading his Knowledge of the universal Truth which could only be known through the worshiping of a God who made no sense."

REFERENCES

- Festinger, Leon, Henry Reichen and Stanley Schacter. 1956. When Prophecy Fails. New York: Harper.

- Flacks, Richard. 1971. Youth and Social Change. Chicago: Markham.

- Foss, Daniel. 1972. Freak Culture. New York: Dutton.

- Foss, Daniel and Ralph Larkin. 1976. "From the 'Gates of Eden' to 'Day of the Locust': An Analysis of the Dissident Youth Movement of the 1960s and Its Heirs in the Early 1970s-The Post Movement Groups." Theory and Society 3: 45-64. 1977. Roar of the Lemmings: Youth, Post-Movement Groups, and the Life Construction Crisis. (Unpublished.)

- Gallup, George, Jr. 1973. "Confidence in the Key U.S. Institutions." Gallup Opinion Index 97: 10- 17. 1975. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935-1971. New York: Random House.

- Hoffman, Abbie. 1968. Revolution for the Hell of It. New York: Dial. 1969. Woodstock Nation. New York: Vintage.

- Kelley, Ken. 1974a. I See the Light. Penthouse (July) 99+. 1974b. Over the Hill at 16. Ramparts (February) 44+.

- Larkin, Ralph. 1974. Protest and Counterculture: Disaffection Among Affluent Youth. Chapter in C.W. Gordon (ed.), Uses of the Sociology of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago.

- Roszack, Theodore. 1969. The Making of a Counterculture. New York: Doubleday.

- Wieder, Lawrence and Don Zimmerman. 1976. Becoming a Freak: Pathways into the Counterculture. Youth and Society 7: 311-314.

- Yankelovich, Daniel. 1972. Changing Values on Campus. New York: Pocketbooks.

(D. A. Foss, & R. W. Larkin (1978). Worshiping the absurd: the negation of social causality among the followers of Guru Maharaj Ji. Sociological Analysis, 39 (2), 157-164.)

Galanter

Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion (Paperback) by Marc Galanter

Excerpts The Charismatic Group Bringing about changes in the thinking and behaviors of individual members in single episodes A Charismatic Religious Sect The Divine Light Mission History of DLM A study held at a national festival held by the Divine Light Mission Pages 5 - 7

These traits of charismatic groups are often best illustrated by the way they bring about changes in the thinking and behaviors of individual members in single episodes. One example comes from my own research experience with the Divine Light Mission, a Hindu-oriented new religious movement. Janice, an eighteen-year-old American-born high-school senior, had described her problems to a counselor from this group at one of the group's religious festivals. I was studying the group while visiting the festival site, and was able to interview members at the counseling center.

The atmosphere at the center was highly cohesive; strong feelings of camaraderie and a sense of shared belief were evident as members arrived to discuss a variety of psychological problems. Janice came to the unit looking quite distressed. The counselor she encountered was not a health professional, but was contributing her time for Service, as religiously motivated good deeds were called. She allowed me to sit in as she spoke to the girl.

As the counselor approached her, Janice immediately burst into tears, explaining her misery and feelings of helplessness. She concentrated on her difficulty in meditating properly, saying of their Guru, "Maharaj Ji has given me Knowledge but I cannot see his light." This was very important to her, she said, because she could not be a premie, or a member of the sect, without this transcendental experience, achieved through proper meditation. She was further troubled because she felt obliged to do more Service for the Guru to compensate for her inability to meditate properly. This was best done by engaging new converts, but, she reported tearfully, she was too frightened to approach potential members.

The counselor listened to these expressions of distress, implicitly conveying support by her presence and demeanor. Her actions were in keeping with the atmosphere of the counseling center; she was empathetic, even affectionate, and alluded to similar problems with meditation other members might experience from time to time. She expressed her perspective from the vantagepoint of the group's transcendent beliefs, and did not minimize the need for proper meditation or Service. She did, however, give Janice some examples of how problems like hers may be overcome in time with full devotion to the Guru, and reassured her that it was not necessary to perform an undue amount of service at present. She said the resolution of this distress might come through a ritual called darshan, meeting with the Guru in person, where such difficulties are often remitted. The following exchange ensued.

Counselor: Now tell me how you feel toward the premies you meditate with.

Janice: Of course, I am very close to them. They mean so much to me, like brothers and sisters.

Counselor: So you know now that when you are with them you confirm Maharaj Ji's Knowledge. You attend satsang(religious sermons) with them, and you will be going to darshan, too. You know that Maharaj Ji will see that you are faithful, and this will soon lead to your relief.

Janice: Yes I do, you are right.

By now the girl, like many others healed by faith, was composed and reassured, even serene. I asked her counselor how she understood the girl's distress. She tried to explain, searching for a simple response, as a professional would speak to a layperson. "She has somehow lost the Knowledge. This happens often. She did not know how to rejoin Maharaj Ji's path." This was stated more as literal fact than as metaphor, an expression of the charismatic role of their leader.

I was then able to speak with Janice. She had been having an affair with an older married man at the time she had become affiliated with the group. When he ended their relationship two months before her arrival for counseling, she became acutely depressed, withdrew from social relations, and was unable to concentrate on her schoolwork. At this point she also began having difficulties meditating, clearly due to the anxiety associated with her depressed state. This only compounded her sense of guilt and probably prolonged the depressive reaction that might otherwise have abated. She began to feel the need to do more Service for the group, in part to atone for her sexual liaison and also because she saw herself as an inadequate sect member. She had not discussed these matters with anyone. She felt her conduct had run contrary to the group's principles and she was ashamed.

The genesis of Janice's difficulties in meditating seemed fairly simple to me, but she had not really put the pieces together herself. Significantly this issue of her disrupted affair did not have to be broached with her Divine Light counselor because the cohesiveness of the group and the explanatory nature of it's dogma ( Maharaj Ji's Knowledge) were implicitly available without fuller exploration. These group forces were mobilized to relieve her feelings of guilt.

I spoke with Janice the next day after a protracted KNOWLEDGE session, a religious experience conducted for a large group of members by a principle of the Guru, and asked her how she was feeling. She said that the counselor

was right to say that Maharaj ji could offer me other ways to serve him. I could tell that when I was with all the premies today, Maharaj Ji's wisdom was touching me and that what I was doing was right…. It's clear that everything will work out; I have the Knowledge in me again. This young woman had been wrenched from anguish compounded by her feelings of distance from the group, and apparently relieved and then healed through a renewed closeness. The norms for behavior set by the group were used to construct her "treatment," and the resolution of her problem was sealed by her commitment to the group's charismatic goal of "Knowledge" or divine enlightenment.

A friendship led to my first encounter with contemporary Religious sects or new religious movements 10 and served to highlight the influential role of group cohesiveness in shaping the behavior of charismatic groups. I had known Beth11 for 10 years, and we had kept in touch while living in different cities. Her personal life had been disrupted by a divorce and a move to a new university teaching job. Soon after she gave up a promising academic career to devote herself to the philosophy of a teenage guru who had arrived in the United States the year before; eventually the moved into a commune of the guru's followers. How could she have adopted such a deviant lifestyle after spending her adult years at liberal universities?

The group she joined, the Divine Light Mission, was introduced to the United States in 1971 by a thirteen-year-old boy from India, scion of a family of Hindu holy men; members believed in the lad's messianic role. Divine Light was not unlike a number of Eastern-oriented sects that emerged in the West around this time. Along with others having a neo-Christian orientation, these groups consisted of the bulk of the emerging cult phenomenon, or, depending on one's view, new religious movements. The introduction Beth gave me to the Divine Light Mission led to a series of studies of these movements.

A History of the Sect (Pages 20 - 22)

Like many groups of Hindu orientation, the Divine Light Mission originated as a religious practice in India. It was founded in 1960 by Sri Hans Ji Maharaj, father of Guru Maharaj Ji and a former member of the Radhasoami Satsang Beas, one of several Sikh religious movements in Northern India. Each of those movements operated independently and was headed by a leader regarded by his members as a satguru, or perfect master, whose task was to lead his followers along a path to God.12

Maharaj Ji was the youngest of four sons of Sri Hans Ji, and even as a young child participated with his family in their public religious programs. Given this status, he was accorded a great deal of attention from his father's devotees and lived in luxury.13 When his father died, eight-year-old Maharaj Ji was selected to lead the sect instead of his older brothers because of his unusual talent at delivering religious homilies.

Within a few years, the sect began to send mahatmas, or apostles, overseas to preach the young guru's inspired mission, and by the time he was eleven, Maharaj Ji himself had traveled to London. Two years later he came to the United States at the invitation of several American premies (followers) who had received Knowledge (enlightenment) in India. The young guru visited several cities and was accorded a favorable reception by many young people who were experiencing the uprooting of the late counterculture era with its rebellions against established authority. As he traveled, he began to attract a following.

Maharaj Ji returned to India to tend to the members of the Mission there, but came back to the United States a year later and established a national headquarters in Denver. Within months, hundreds of American youths accepted the guru's invitation to receive Knowledge and flew with him to India in several chartered jumbo jets for a festival called Hans Jayanti. On their arrival, his followers were taken to the family's ashram, or religious commune, for several weeks.

By this time, about a thousand members had moved into a dozen Divine Light communes in Denver,14 and soon there were several thousand members nationwide. Commune residents devoted their full time to the group, and took an active role in developing a national organization for the guru. The study I carried out then provided a profile of sect members,15 revealing that they were typically single (82%) whites (97%) in their twenties (73%). The distribution of Catholics (32%) and Protestants (44%) was not very different than the general population (38% and 57% respectively), but there was a greater proportion of Jews (21% vs. 2%).16 The members' middle class background was reflected by the large majority that had attended college (76%), as had one or both parents (71%). Typical group members were middle class young adults, many of whom had interrupted higher education to join the sect.

What were some of the trapping of religious practice in this emerging movement? Potential initiates were usually introduced to the Divine Light Mission at a session of religious discourse called a satsang, where experienced members presented the philosophy of the sect to the assembled group. The satsang could be delivered to active members or to those with only a casual interest. It was something of a polemic interspersed with parables, and because members were bright and sophisticated, these discourses tended to be engaging, making use of both Hindu mythology and Western philosophy.

After a period of acquaintance with the group, a potential member might approach a mahatma from the sect. These were long time Indian devotees designated by the guru to initiate new members. Although their pronouncements were often obscure, they lent an aura of transcendence to the initiation. In the initiation ceremony the mahatma rubbed the eyes of the newly initiated members, producing a series of flashes that were perceived as divine light. Initiates were thereafter-called premies, or follower of the guru.

The premies undertook four types of meditative experience during daily periods of silent repose, spent with eyes closed. In the first meditation technique they visualized a light, described as real and intense. In the second they heard music, and this too was reported to be not metaphoric but rather an essential sound of the universe. In the third meditation technique they tasted "nectar" supposedly a purifying fluid flowing from the brain to the throat,17 and finally they spoke the "word" said to be a primordial vibration that underlies all existence. These meditations were recounted with great zeal.

Performing Service, or good works, for the sect was a requirement, and giving Satsang was one type of Service, as it led others to hear that the knowledge was available. Other Service included helping with arrangement of speaking tours for the mahatmas and drawing new converts into the group. Premies could live in ashrams to devote themselves more full to Service. Premies often worked part or full time outside the ashram and gave a sizable portion-sometimes all-of their income to the movement. They also practiced celibacy, vegetarianism, and frequent meditation. The focus of this ascetic existence was their religious mission rather than personal pleasure or gain.

In 1973, the sect rented the Houston Astrodome for a celebration of world peace and religious rejuvenation, "Millenium '73", billed as" the most significant event in human history." Devotees were flown from overseas, and the event was promoted with considerable advance publicity and a good deal of media coverage. A highlight of the event was the participation of Rennie Davis, one of the Chicago seven anti Vietnam War protestors who had recently become a premie. The event, however, fell far short of expectations. The stadium was only partially filled; a variety of millennial expectations, such as the arrival of world peace, failed to materialize, and the whole undertaking left members of the group disillusioned and in debt.

The guru himself however, was increasingly taken with the enticements of American society. He was after all, still a teenager, not above spraying his coterie with shaving cream for fun. Such pranks led them to speak of his "heavenly playfulness." He began dressing in western clothes and adopted a luxurious lifestyle that included setting up residence in a mansion and being ferried about in a limousine.

Soon he married his secretary, an attractive American woman several years older. This he did against his mother's wishes and the event precipitated a schism in the family, ultimately leading to the estrangement of the American branch of the religious sect from its main body in India, where his mother and brothers remained. His mother revoked his title as satguru, an action he refused to accept. Maharaj Ji now began to preach against the betrayal he felt he experienced at the hands of his family, couching his arguments in parables drawn from Hindu mythology. In America too, the marriage caused dismay, particularly among the premies in the ashrams who had followed the strict path of celibacy dictated by the guru himself. Perhaps half these members left the sect over this issue.18

Maharaj Ji now moved his headquarters from Denver to Miami without explanation. This caused a major dislocation among his remaining followers, most of whom did accompany him. In Miami, he moved further away from the sect's traditional Hindu flavor and gave less active direction to sect members. At first, he led religious meetings about once a month in a hired auditorium, where as many as 500 to 600 followers would assemble, but after a while he appeared less often, and rarely visited the ashrams in the community. Maharaj Ji nonetheless was still regarded as a divine figure by his followers.

The movement had apparently reached its peak of expansion and popularity, and in the next few years many members drifted away, although they still retained an attentuated fidelity to their spiritual leader. Some who had interrupted their education or their careers began to look for a more stable identity within the Miami community. As they settled down, they increasingly adopted more traditional roles as young working adults and parents, while maintaining their reverence for the guru and their affection for other premies.

In 1984 Maharaj Ji moved again, with his wife, four children, and considerable assets. This time he went to the affluent beach community of Malibu in West Los Angeles but did not ask his followers to join him. Although he continued to make occasional spiritual tours, he did not appear at most of the religious gatherings held in his name. The diminishing numbers of his faithful, most of them still in Miami, did not appear to be disappointed in the sect's lack of coherence, and often explained it as paradoxically showing the strength of their leader's spiritual message. They continued in their meditations, although these became more of a personal matter and were practiced less frequently and in isolation.

Initial Encounters (Pages 22 - 28)

My first encounter with the Divine Light Mission came when Beth invited me to visit an ashram at the time the group was expanding. She thought the sect would be interesting for a psychiatrist to observe because some members had experienced a relief from serious emotional problems when they joined. She felt her group had tapped a large area of mental function psychiatry was unaware of.

The atmosphere in the ashram was indeed quite striking. On entering a large apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I was greeted in a friendly, even intimate fashion by people who were complete strangers. The intense communality of the members was immediately apparent, a quality that 'as clearly an important aspect of the group's function. One could sense a closeness among those present, and an absence of the minor tensions that would be expected in a setting where two dozen people were living in tight quarters. A college dormitory, a military barracks, or a summer camp soon weal a certain amount of hostile banter or argument. These appeared to be absent in the ashram. Caring and intimacy, reflective of the group's cohesiveness, seemed to mute any expression of animosity.

There were kind words, offers of food, expressions of interest, and warm smiles, all from people I'd never met before. Any question was soon answered, sometimes even anticipated. Having been invited by one of their members and defined temporarily as one of their own, I was made to feel as if I were entering a supportive envelope, to be protected from the rough edges of relationships in the outside world.

To illustrate the healing offered by her newfound religious experience, Beth told me about Janet, a twenty-six-year-old premie whose case showed the vital role that social bonds within this group play in stabilizing the members' subjective state and behavior. I later corroborated the details in interviews with the woman herself and her relatives and friends. Over the course of several hospitalizations dating back to her mid-teens, Janet had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. She had been placed on a variety of medications, usually major tranquilizers in modest to large doses. Despite this treatment, the intermittent hallucinatory periods, episodes of rage, and inappropriate behavior were not effectively brought under control. When Janet was not in the hospital, she lived with her hapless parents, and was apparently quite demanding and easily upset by their presence. The parents, unable to move her into an independent living situation, were pleased that she at least retained a few friends, some of whom she had met while in the hospital. Occasionally her tenuous equilibrium broke down at home, whereupon florid psychotic symptoms appeared, including delusions of persecution, and her unpredictable behavior often led to a return to the hospital. In the most tragic periods of her illness, fearing that her eyes were the source of demonic visitations, Janet actually blinded herself with her own hands.

The sight of her sunken eyelids confirmed this, as did a later physical examination; here was even more convincing evidence of unmanageable behavior than the hospitalizations and trials of psychotropic medication. But Janet was now behaving appropriately, even though she had taken no medication in the three years since joining the group. During my first visit she conversed with companions, apparently in good spirits, and was able to tell her story to me. She said she felt relaxed with other premies and had experienced no psychotic symptoms since joining the group, although she had seen the "divine light" during her meditation, an experience common to other members.

It became apparent from observing her and speaking with other members that the group not only displayed affection and support, but also set clear standards for her social behavior. This was something her parents had tried but failed to do. While engaged within the cohesive structure of the group, she felt compelled to comply with the expectations of her fellow members, a process that aborted the downward spiral of regressive behavior regularly ending in a psychotic state at home. This dynamic was illustrated by the comment of a friend and fellow member: "When she gets irritable or complains, I let her know that it's not the way premies should behave. She knows that we care for her, and that our scolding is done with love." Indeed, other members did not leave her alone for extended periods, even if she did not approach them.

This supportive atmosphere and sense of closeness apparently had a strong impact on the mental state of certain members, especially individuals like Janet. Somehow the sect was reaching some disturbed persons in a way that conventional psychiatry could not. Through intense togetherness and support, it seemed to have turned around their thinking and behavior.

But this was also true for members who had been well adjusted. Beth, for example, was profoundly changed by the sect. She had previously demonstrated herself to be highly intelligent and competent, and excelled academically without great effort. With independent-mindedness, she had assumed a leadership role in the antiwar movement of the late 1960s, yet only a few days before my visit to the ashram she sat with me at the dinner table and seemed transfixed, removed from all worldly cares. Only when she spoke of her newfound commitment did she become animated. She talked of the divine light she could literally see, the sacred nectar she could taste, and the divine music she heard. Under the group's influence Beth had somehow acquired a mental set entirely at variance with her previous attitudes. This development seemed no less surprising than Janet's; both women had apparently been transformed in their behavior, feelings, and perceptions.

Within a few months, I began to study this compelling phenomenon. I enlisted the help of Peter Buckley, a colleague at the Albert Einstein college of Medicine, and we conducted interviews and designed a questionnaire to evaluate two issues: first, the relief of psychological distress experienced on joining, and, second, the degree of social cohesiveness felt by these members toward the group. I hypothesized that a relationship existed between the perceived emotional relief and fidelity to the group.

The study was conducted on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, at a national festival held by the Divine Light Mission, one of the conclaves regularly organized to allow members the opportunity for personal contact, or darshan, with the guru. A field had been rented for the weeklong event. Events there showed how the group's cohesiveness could be mobilized as a potent social force and how nonmembers could be excluded.

The atmosphere of belonging was pervasive, as some 5,000 young adults gathered to make preparations. They interacted in a congenial and open manner, even when they had struck up acquaintance only moments before. To say the least, this was not an impersonal work site. It represented a network of people who hastened to assist each other and sought ways to further their common cause of making the festival a shared experience, something valuable to all.

As a group, the members looked as though they had been drawn from the graduate campus of a large university-bright, not too carefully groomed, casually dressed. They were lively, good-tempered, and committed to their mutual effort. Some set up tents; others sold religious tracts and pins with pictures of the guru, his American wife, and their baby. Some handled food; others moved about with an air of eager expectancy. There was no idleness, brashness, marijuana, beer, loud music, or flirtation-all hallmarks of a more typical assembly of people in their twenties.

The administrative structure for the event appeared informal, but no sense of disorganization pervaded. The speakers addressed the group from a large floating stage on a lake. The program moved along smoothly from one event to the next, whether singing for the guru ("He's Got the Whole World in His Hands") or listening to various leaders deliver satsang.

The group's congeniality apparently extended to anyone designated as acceptable, as long as the proper signal was made. Thus, because Beth, who held a position of respect in the group, had labeled my colleague and me "okay," we were acceptable. After being introduced to the appropriate parties, we were greeted warmly and made to feel a part of the group. Help was offered as I began to query various organizers on strategy. Was it possible to pick out people at random from the registration lines to administer the questionnaire? There surely was a way, once I deliberated with them over the options available. Was space necessary for subjects to sit quietly and fill out research forms? Something would be worked out for every need. Soon we were all sitting around and talking about experiences of mutual interest, even of a few remote common acquaintances.

We also saw the other side of the coin-how the group defined and protected its boundary between members and the outside world. The demarcation could be drawn tightly, much as a droplet of quicksilver coalesces and separates from its surroundings, or as family members draw together and limit access of outsiders to their personal affairs. Our own status suddenly changed from inside to outside when a more suspicious member of the administrative group asked me if the project had been "approved" by senior figures from the Mission. In the absence of a definite response, our legitimacy was now open to question. Although it was not entirely clear what this approval entailed, a request was quickly relayed to the upper reaches of the Divine Light hierarchy and was then-to my surprise and distress-peremptorily turned down.

The members I had met quickly withdrew their offers of friendship, providing an object lesson on exclusion from a cohesive group. I soon felt myself to be a nonperson, treated civilly but coolly, having become an outsider as rapidly as I had been made an insider. The very people who had hovered around us to help with our plans now found making conversation uncomfortable. People seemed to be looking through my colleague and me rather than at us. Toward the end of the day approval came as suddenly as it had been withdrawn, with the information that a decision had been made at the "highest" level, presumably in consultation with the guru himself. Acceptance and offers of help came with rekindled warmth. As if automatically triggered, a renewed air of intimacy suffused our exchanges.

This experience illustrates the considerable mobilization of support that such a cohesive group can generate, either informally or with formal sanction, as well as the strength of its controls over actions. The sect's ideology lends the control structure a legitimacy that penetrates the layers of the individual members' own decision making, eliciting group-sanctioned behavior. At no point in the Orlando sequence was there any significant diversity in attitudes expressed toward us. Each group member adhered to the consensus and thereby assured unanimity. As in Ann's family, this intense mutuality reflected the need both for security in the face of an outside world that is perceived as threatening and to prevent internal conflict. Agreement in attitude and views serves to protect the integrity of the group as a social system.

Later in the festival I asked to interview people who had experienced psychiatric or drug problems, hoping that they might help clarify the sect's impact on psychiatric symptoms in individual members, as well as the function of its intense social influence in mediating psychological change. One member brought forward was Ellen, a thirty-four-year-old divorced, part-time clerk whose five children had been remanded to her mother's care by the court because they had been neglected during her protracted bouts of psychiatric and drug problems. These problems had apparently come under control when she joined the Divine Light Mission. Her story illustrates two points. First, like many other initiates, she was attracted to a charismatic group at a time of psychological crisis, as if seeking aid to cope with extreme distress. Second, the support and structure offered by the sect allowed her to pull her psychological resources together. She used the strength of the group as an auxiliary ego to help regain her emotional stability.

Seven years before, Ellen had begun using drugs and was taking ten to fifteen barbiturate capsules a day. When psychedelics became popular, she began using LSD and later became addicted to a variety of opiates: morphine, Demerol, heroin, and illicit methadone. Her opiate habit became very expensive, and for four years she survived through prostitution. While on her roller coaster of drug abuse, she was hospitalized on several occasions for psychiatric problems, typically for a few days or weeks, during which she often smuggled a supply of heroin into the hospital.

The despair that precipitated these hospitalizations led to several suicide attempts. Ellen denied any history of hallucinations and gave no evidence of formal delusional thinking. Significantly, she reported that her mood improved by the time she left the hospital, often without any antidepressant medication. This history, along with her somewhat histrionic presentation of it, left the impression that she did not have a major depressive disorder. I thought she might have a borderline personality disorder, reflecting impulsive and self-destructive behavior and poor coping skills, and that the episodes requiring hospitalization were precipitated by drug use and environmental stress.

At one point, despairing of any escape from heroin addiction and the consequent need for prostitution, Ellen applied for methadone maintenance, which allowed her to stay away from illicit drugs and out of the hospital for over a year. She thought of herself as independent, though, and did not like the regimen of frequent visits to the clinic required by the program. Like a number of patients on methadone maintenance, Ellen mistook her newfound stability for a genuine ability to withstand the pressures of daily life. Wanting to "take control of her life," she withdrew from the methadone program and soon began using marijuana heavily and taking barbiturates again. As she said, I used anything I could to stay off the heroin."

Her drug use rapidly increased, and she began to shoot heroin again. Feeling panicky over a likely full-fledged relapse, she fled to Colorado from her native Philadelphia, in the hope that life in a rural setting would save her from further deterioration. It did not, and she continued to use drugs, setting into life as a street person.

After a month in Colorado, Ellen met some members of the Divine Light Mission. She immediately felt comfortable with them and soon began to appreciate the merit of their religious devotion. She wanted to become part of he group to salvage herself from a profound sense of desolation. Each day he went to their ashram where she was accepted warmly, began to cut down her use of drugs, and attempted to meditate. Though living alone, she felt herself to be part of a "close, loving community." Now, ten months later, she reported only occasionally using half a marijuana cigarette. Part of my exchange with Ellen was revealing of the role played by the group's cohesiveness.

M.G.: How did you feel when you were shooting heroin in Colorado?

ELLEN: I was terrified, but I also felt that I had returned to a friend, one who would heal my wounded feelings but then hold me in its claws. I knew I couldn't control it ...

M.G.: And the premies, how did they help you?

ELLEN: Once I got to know them, I realized they loved me. They took me up, and it was as if they were holding me in their arms. I was like a baby whose mother guides its moves and cares for it. When I wanted to take heroin, or even to smoke [marijuana], I knew they were with me to help me stay away from it, even if I was alone. And their strength was there for me, even before I could hardly meditate at all. I could rely on their invisible hand, moved by Maharaj Ji's wisdom, to help me gain control.

M.G.: What was it that they did?

ELLEN: After a while it was everything they did that made me know I belonged. Just feeling their love was all I needed.

The drug abuse syndrome that Ellen confronted when she arrived in Colorado was serious, and the likelihood of her aborting a decline into full-blown heroin addiction was small. A geographic escape generally is of little value. Few patients in the throes of an addiction such as hers, combining opiates and other drugs, are able to establish control over drug abuse on their own. Her description of the intense support she felt from other Divine Light members suggested an alternative dependency. Her reliance on the group for the strength to face the stress of everyday life paralleled the reliance she had placed on drugs. Both aided her in coping with conflict, but at the cost of independent action.

The sect had exerted a remarkable influence on this woman's addictive problem, affecting her in a way that our usual psychological therapies do not. What produces such influence? We can begin to answer this question by recalling the discussions of the family and the therapy group earlier in the chapter. Further insights came from our studies of Divine Light members in Orlando.

A Study of Group Cohesiveness (Pages 28- 31)

The objective study of behavior in charismatic groups is not a simple undertaking, and two issues complicating this research are relevant here: investigator bias and limitations in available methodologies. The problem of investigator bias reflects the very nature of charismatic groups. Such groups maintain their views even in the face of contrary evidence, and, as we just saw, do this with a mutuality that stands independent of contrary evidence. They also tend to elicit contrary views and animosity from the surrounding community, which itself may be no less biased regarding an alien sect. As a result, the investigator is almost always pressed to adopt a position that either favors or opposes the stands taken by the charismatic group. For example, at times my studies on charismatic sects were attacked as a reflection of my being "duped" by the Moonies; at other times the same studies were seen just the opposite, as evidence of the use of my "professional credentials to discredit" these groups.19 A dispassionate middle ground is not easily defined.

A second problem in carrying out this research lies in designing a valid methodology. We had to adapt approaches and techniques from a variety of disciplines, including psychiatry, social psychology, anthropology, and sociology. In addition, questions often had to be framed so as to make use of the methodology available, rather than what might be the most interesting to study. For example, my principal interest in initiating the Orlando study was to examine the major psychopathology found among some Divine Light members. Practically speaking, this could not be studied in a controlled fashion because reliable self-report measurements for the relevant diagnostic categories were not available. Instead we had to use a more general psychological adjustment scale.

Even more broadly, the choice of a proper context in which to study the interrelatedness of group members in a charismatic group also presents a major paradox. The group phenomena observed among its members-their intense closeness, feelings, and beliefs-can hardly be re-created in a laboratory. Yet so many real-world variables impinge on the phenomena to be studied that to observe them outside the laboratory setting, without ample controls, would leave researchers vulnerable to a circus of external issues, let alone their own subjectivity.

This paradox is illustrated by my previous research on the influence of social context on drug use and abuse. Volunteers in a laboratory setting smoked either active marijuana, placebo marijuana, or no drug at the outset of each of a series of professionally led encounter-group meetings.20 The controlled setting was too artificial, however, to create the degree of cohesiveness usually associated with drug use. The question remained as to how such a controlled evaluation of group interrelatedness could be undertaken effectively.21

Outside the laboratory, studies on the peyote rituals of the Native American Indian Church in the Southwest United States22 show that the tribe's cohesive social structure was closely integrated into this religious experience when the hallucinogen is taken in the context of a close-knit community. This religious context clearly cannot be reproduced in an ad hoc fashion, but one can surmise that these close ties are an effective vehicle for transforming a potentially disruptive hallucinogenic experience into a constructive and therapeutic one.23

In what setting can the role of the naturally emerging social ties of a religious sect be best studied? My access to the Divine Light Mission appeared to offer an opportunity for analyzing group cohesiveness in a systematic, controlled way within its natural setting. Specifically, a statistical assessment could be made of the relationship between such variables as group cohesiveness and other measures of the members' emotional status. In this respect, the sect presented an "experiment of nature."

To conduct such an analysis, a fairly large sample of subjects was needed, and consequently it was not feasible to rely primarily on interviews, since personnel were not available. We developed a seven-page multiple-choice questionnaire and gave copies to 119 subjects who were active members of the Divine Light Mission, selected at random from the festival registration lines.*

In framing the questionnaire, we had to address certain technical problems. One was the need to choose symptoms of mental illness or health that could be queried within this format. Some scales for evaluating major mental illness, such as the SCL-90,24 have limited specificity and are fairly lengthy. It was

• Members of charismatic groups are remarkably compliant in filling out long questionnaires, so long as it is sanctioned by their leadership. I have found, however, that more independent sorts in less zealous groups can give an investigator no end of trouble. Best to use a scale that drew on symptoms experienced by a large portion of the population, such as anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Since we needed to ascertain the subjects' perception of their psychological state both before and after joining the group, the scale had to be short and easy to fill out relative to the subjects' experience during more than one period in their life.

For a brief ad hoc scale, it also seemed best to develop items that would have face validity, that is, they would clearly reflect the symptoms of psychological distress. This approach contrasts with self-report psychological scales such as the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory (the MMPI), a widely used but quite long schedule whose validity has been tested by standardizing items on large groups of people with different psychiatric diagnoses. Each of the MMPI questions in itself (comparable to "I like to collect stamps"), however, does not have an obvious relationship to the symptoms measured by the test.

Table 2-1 gives the items developed for this Psychological Distress Scale, each rated from 1 ("not at all") to 5 ("very much") by the respondent.25 The total points for the eight symptoms indicated the psychological distress score. Subjects evaluated each symptom during four two-month periods: the worst they had felt; right before their first contact with the Divine Light Mission; immediately after joining; and at present. This made it possible to compare their estimation of the psychological distress they had experienced before and after joining.

In addition to psychological distress, a second "outcome" variable, drug use, was studied. Each of six common drugs of abuse was listed, and subjects were asked to rate how often they used each drug during the same four two-month periods on a scale from 1 ("none at all") to 5 ("more than once on most days").

Table 2-1. Psychological Distress Items (and Implied Symptoms) Subjects indicated how much they felt this way, on a scale of 1 ("not at all") to 5 ("very much"). 1. I felt nervous and tense. [anxiety] ( ) 2. I felt depressed and glum. [depression] ( ) 3. I had thoughts of ending my life. [suicidal ideation] ( ) 4. I had the feeling that I was being watched or talked about by others. [referential thinking] ( ) 5. I was unclear about how to lead my life. [anomie] ( ) 6. I got into trouble with my job, at school, or with the law. [behavioral] ( ) 7. I heard voices that other people did not hear. [hearing voices] ( ) 8. Emotional problems interfere with my 'adjustment in life. [general emotional maladaptation] ( )

Responses were then related to specific aspects of the group membership to find out how group membership might have led to any psychological and drug use changes. Group cohesiveness as a predictor of change, as well as other group issues such as meditation practice, to be discussed later, were also considered.

Group cohesiveness was measured on the scale given in Table 2-2, adapted from the earlier study on marijuana use and social interaction. A member's cohesive feelings about three different groups were recorded: the ten members of the sect whom the subject knew best, all the sect members, and the ten nonmembers the subject knew best. This offered a contrast between the subjects' feelings of affiliation toward people inside and outside the group.

Results of the Study (Pages 31 -33)

The survey produced revealing findings regarding the psychology of the charismatic group. First, the members' reports reflected a relief of distress on joining. Second, the members' cohesiveness toward the group was closely associated with this relief. From these findings emerged a beginning sense of what motivated members to comply with the group.

Members who had joined the sect roughly two years before reported a considerable decline in psychological distress and drug use after joining. Many had a history of psychological problems and several had sought professional help (38%) or had been hospitalized for emotional disorders (9%). These findings formed the first objective evidence of the role psychological distress plays in recruitment to such groups. Furthermore, members' level of distress symptoms decline over the course of conversion. The average incidence for the items on the Distress Scale is given in Table 2-3, as are the figures for marijuana and heroin use, which reflect the all-around decline in both psycho-

Table 2-2. Social Cohesiveness Scale

Subjects rated their feelings toward the group on each item, on a scale of 1 ("not at all") to 5 ("very much"). 1. How much do these descriptions apply to the group? a. They care for me ( ) b. They are happy ( ) c. They are suspicious of me [scored in reverse] ( ) 2. How would you describe your feelings for them? a. I care for them ( ) b. They make me happy ( ) c. I am suspicious of them [scored in reverse] ( ) 3. Do they have the qualities a premie [member] should have? ( } 4. Do you like being part of their activities? ( )

Table 2-3. Outcome of Initiation into the Divine Light Mission These figures indicate the percentage of subjects who reported the presence of symptoms during each of four two-month periods. The Four Periods Three Sample Items The Right Right Worst Before After Ever joining joining Psychological Distress Scale, 80 71 45 37 average for the 8 items Daily marijuana use 65 45 0 7 Any heroin use 14 7 1 0

logical distress and drug use.26 This observation revealed an apparent overall improvement in psychiatric state derived from conversion and its retention through continued membership. These findings were confirmed in later research on the Unification Church where it was possible to study recruits as well as disaffiliated members.

The cohesiveness scores showed that respondents felt considerably closer toward members of their sect than toward nonmembers whom they knew best.27 Almost all of the respondents (99%) said they cared a lot for the ten members they knew best, and most (56%) felt similarly toward the membership overall. Only the minority of members (39%) responded this way in relation to the nonmembers they knew best. If valid, this would mean that most members felt closer toward the sect overall (few of whose members they had actually met) than toward the ten people outside the sect they knew best. Their connection to the group far outweighed their attachments to outsiders.

To examine the relationship, if any, between the feeling of cohesiveness and the symptom changes reported, we statistically analyzed the average decline in symptom scores.28 Social cohesion accounted for 37% of the overall decline in psychological distress that occurred after subjects joined the group. That is, a large part of the enhanced well-being derived from joining this sect could be attributed to the members' feelings of relatedness with fellow members.

Such findings were notable since the degree of neurotic distress experienced by individuals is determined by many factors, including differences in temperament, quality of life, and how people see themselves in relation to the rest of the world. But for the young adults in our study, the decline in feelings of psychological distress was directly proportional to the degree of cohesiveness they felt toward the group.

One might have thought that members like Ellen, who were most emotionally troubled before entering the sect, would have benefited the most from joining. Yet the survey indicated that serious emotional problems before joining were not specifically correlated with either a greater or lesser decline in psychological distress. Nor were serious emotional problems correlated with higher social cohesiveness score.29 All members, whether seriously distressed or not, reported an improved emotional state after joining.

These findings naturally raise the question of whether subjects overestimated the degree of distress before joining and the amount of improvement after. While this may well have occurred, a later study on the Unification Church (see Chapter 8) supported the view that the effect on psychological well-being of joining the group was real.

Such emotional gains reinforce members' involvement in the group by effectively "rewarding" them for their fealty to it. The reward, specifically, is enhanced well-being when the members feel closer to each other. And this reward may help explain the members' remarkable conformity to the group's expectations, since acceptance and conformity bring relief from distress.

PAGE 34 - CHAPTER 3 - SHARED BELIEFS

(About DLM - Pages - 34 & 35) The beliefs held in common by members of cults are a vital force in the group's operation. They bind members together, shape their attitudes, and motivate them to act in self-sacrifice. I began to appreciate the importance of such beliefs in following the career of my friend who had joined the Divine Light Mission. At first it seemed certain that Beth's involvement would be ephemeral; surely this sensible and successful young woman would soon turn back to her roots in the Western mainstream. But this assumption proved wrong. Beth moved her home across country more than once to follow her youthful guru, and took a number of trips to India along with his followers. Several years later she married a fellow premie. After having a child, she obtained a university position and returned to teaching, but remained deeply committed to her belief in the guru.

A few years after Beth joined the Divine Light Mission, it was obvious that she believed very strongly in something the group offered and that her involvement reflected an abiding faith, not easy to fathom but quite telling in its implications for the psychology of charismatic groups. Consider a letter in which she spoke of her belief in the guru, whose actual contact with thousands of followers must have been limited.

His revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven within us all is a completely practical experience for each and every individual.... The gift of Knowledge that Maharaj Ji has given me is so deeply satisfying and joyfully constant that I can't imagine another being conveying the truth as he has revealed it.

Beth accepted the guru's transcendent message in a way that others before her might have embraced the prophets and messiahs of old. This literal faith was hard to understand since it came from a woman whom I had known some years before as agnostic and even cynical, and was clearly at variance with the underlying attitudes one would expect in a person with her background and pluralistic views. To understand the role such strong beliefs play in charismatic groups, we will examine a related historical example. (talks about other groups)

PAGE 60 -CHAPTER 4 - ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS

People are more vulnerable to social influence when they are made to think, sense, and feel differently than usual, «-hen someone or something disrupts their emotional balance. Such changes in subjective experience (or alterations in consciousness) can undermine the psychological matrix in which our views are rooted, so that we lose track of customary internal signposts. They may also introduce a feeling of mystery, or a sense that forces beyond our control are operating. Thus, they can prime us to accept unaccustomed explanations for our experiences and adopt new attitudes implied in these explanations. In this respect altered consciousness can help shape members' attitudes in a charismatic group.

I was struck by the significant role of alterations in consciousness when studying the Divine Light Mission. From my first contact with this group, members mentioned the importance of the four "meditations" to their personal commitment. Each drew on a different sense, causing unexpected visions, tastes, and music. The sect itself was named for one of these sensory experiences, the "Divine Light," that members reported seeing during their personal meditation. At first these meditation practices did not seem compelling, perhaps because of my own inclination to dismiss as self-deceptive or pathologic those experiences that could not be verified by independent observation. Their importance became clear, however, as I spoke with one person, Raymond, whose views I tended to take more seriously, since he too was a psychiatrist. Sharing a profession made it easier to empathize with him. In addition, Raymond was a bright young man, well-versed in contemporary psychological thought, and willing to consider all sides of an issue. Nonetheless, in his recounting he seemed almost obsessed with the alterations in consciousness he ascribed to his religious experience.

While in medical school, Raymond wanted to be a general practitioner and decided to do his internship in family medicine. Then he took a position in a small-town clinic to have the personal contact with patients he had long an-ticipated. After two years in this crowded clinic, he became disenchanted with the limited opportunities for working closely with patients and began to wonder about other possibilities. An acquaintance invited Raymond to attend satsang, the religious sermon of the Divine Light Mission. He did and found in she group members a sense of conviction lacking in his own life. He had begun to feel bored and the group offered a focus of interest. He attended satsang again, and described the following experience from his third visit.

He was sitting comfortably in a group of a dozen people, mostly members, listening to a young woman speaking about the importance of the guru's mission. He was not attending too closely to her words, but was instead lulled into relaxation by the rhythm of her speech. Suddenly, he saw a bright light emanating from her body, forming a halo around her. He later recalled

"The light was intense. She glowed as if she were a religious figure in a movie, and it gave her the appearance of holiness. It was a real light, as real as the lightbulb in a lamp. So I sat there listening carefully to her words, and they were no different from the ones she had spoken minutes before. Now, I'm a fairly cynical guy, and I don't take the unexpected at face value, so I did a double take and looked away, expecting the light to disappear-but it was still there. No one had even told me to expect a light like this, and no one else seemed to see it.

When she finished I got up to leave and, as I walked toward the door - she was still glowing - I realized that something had happened to me that I couldn't dismiss. The experience would somehow have to become a part of my understanding of the world around me. Over the next few weeks I found myself getting involved further with the group, and soon decided to ask to receive Knowledge [to join]".

Raymond continued to work at his clinic for a few months, but then decided that he had to carry the group's message to others, so he took a position in an alcoholism treatment program where he hoped to help his patients by conveying to them the sect's message. After six months in that program, his patients were unresponsive to his message, and Raymond decided that a career in psychiatry would offer him a better opportunity to deal with the spiritual issues his conversion had raised. He took his training in psychiatry and continued to meditate, occasionally experiencing intense visual and bodily sensations and changes in his sense of time.

This episode of altered consciousness was not very different from many in the literature on religious conversion, but was nonetheless difficult to explain from a psychiatric perspective. Raymond's vision of the halo might be construed as a hallucinatory experience in conventional psychiatric terms, and thereby ascribed to causes of perceptual change such as a dissociative reaction, transient psychosis, or even mass hysteria. But his history, his behavior, and his demeanor as we spoke gave no hint of such a diagnosis. This "vision" also fit in nicely with his later experiences in meditation, and could not be dismissed as an isolated phenomenon.

I was left with a tale told by a perceptive and lucid observer who described a phenomenon that did not fit into my handbook of diagnoses. Nonetheless, the experience had clearly served as a basis for the attribution of a new meaning to his life. It set him off balance and he turned to the philosophy of the sect to explain the puzzling event. From that point, Raymond's relationship with the Divine Light Mission followed with seeming inevitability, and served as a basis for his understanding of his own role in life. This experience had many counterparts in my interviews with other members of the Divine Light Mission, as it became clear that altered consciousness in the form of inexplicable perceptions and transcendent emotional states was common in their conversion and subsequent religious experience.

These reports made a compelling argument for the role of altered consciousness as a force in the charismatic group, even though the phenomena reported were difficult to integrate into contemporary models of psychiatric function. Research on mental function is generally conducted at the level of observable behavior or neurophysiology, and does not usually address subjective aspects of experience. Nomenclature is based on what can be seen and measured by independent observers, whereas altered consciousness is usually only subjectively perceived.

Altered consciousness, however, can be a prime motive force among both well-adapted and disturbed individuals. Like group cohesiveness and shared beliefs, it acts as a vehicle for the identity transformation and engagement that draw people into a charismatic group.

As a starting point for understanding the role of altered consciousness in charismatic groups, we must turn back nearly a century to the work of William James. James reasoned that "the distribution of consciousness shows itself to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself."' This concept of consciousness as a meta-organ is useful, and serves as a credible basis for Arnold Ludwig's definition of an altered state of consciousness:

any mental state(s), induced by various physiological, psychological, or pharmacological maneuvers or agents, which can be recognized subjectively by the individual himself (or by the objective observer of the individual) as representing a sufficient deviation [from] ... alert, waking, consciousness.' But given these definitions, what specific aspects of perception are actually altered in the altered state of consciousness= We can consider consciousness as if it were a multidimensional space, with each dimension representing some aspect of perception or sensation.' Different altered states may then be defined in relation to the dimensions altered. We will discuss a variety of dimensions relating to charismatic groups, such as time sense, personal identity, appetite drives, and visual perception. Each dimension contributes to the totality of a person's state of consciousness and allows for mapping out similarities and differences between altered states. When altered by a charismatic group experience, each can serve as a nidus for the attribution of new meaning to one's experience.

Consciousness and its alterations are grounded in physiology, so that states subjectively perceived as similar may also have similar physiologic characteristics. This is illustrated by the changes in neural function found in some states of mental relaxation and reflection. For example. electroencephalographic (EEG) studies of experienced practitioners of Transcendental Meditation reveal an increase in alpha wave activity; during meditation. This calming state can be compared to that experienced during marijuana intoxication when people are allowed to relax in the absence of social input. Here the EEG is characterized by alpha waves of greater amplitude.' An increase in alphawave activity coupled with similar mental relaxation can also be achieved through biofeedback training. 6

The fact that altered states may be substituted for each other also suggests similarities. For example, many members of the new religious movements switched from drugs to meditation to achieve similar mental effects. The Divine Light members who previously had "serious drug problems" and frequently experienced altered consciousness from drug use were more likely to practice meditation routinely after joining the sect than those who had not used drugs extensively.' Crossing over between one vehicle for achieving altered consciousness to a second one suggests an inherent relationship between these subjective states; it also complements the observation that states may be induced by different means.

Meditation (Page 63)

The important role of altered states in the Divine Light Mission was set in relief by the responses from members describing their own transcendental experiences during meditation, which almost all of them (95%) practiced daily." In answering the questionnaire summarized in Table 4-1, they used a scale designed to register increasing levels of hallucinatory-like phenomena, and thus more profound alterations in consciousness. In the auditory sphere, for example, members were asked whether they had "heard something special that no one else could hear," the first item on this scale. The large majority (92%) reported having such experiences during meditation. Of these, about half (49%) reported hearing it "only inside" them; a small number (14%) answered, "I could almost hear it in my ear"; but almost a third (29%) gave the most literal response for such hallucinatory experiences: "I heard it with my ears." This response is most striking since it would be compatible with a diagnosis of psychosis outside the context of religious experience.

Table 4-1 reflects a widespread alteration in subjective and sensory states during meditation, but the way in which meditation was practiced is also

Table 4-1. Altered Consciousness During Meditation

Each respondent indicated the extent to which he or she had the following experiences during meditation, using a scale of 0-3. The first figure after each item is the portion of members who reported any such experience at all (scale responses 1-3); the second figure is the portion who reported the experience most intensely (response 3). 1. I heard something special that no one else could hear. [92%, at all; 29%, I heard it with my ears] 2. I saw something special that no one else could see. [92%, at all; 30%, I could see it clearly with my eyes] 3. I had strong sexual feelings without physical sexual contact. [39%, at all; 14%, clearly more intense than orgasm] 4. I had a special and unfamiliar feeling in my body. [91%, at all; 49%, very intense] 5. Time passed faster or slower than usual in a very special way. [90%, at all; 34%, very intense] 0 6. I felt myself to be different from my usual self in a very special way. [94%, at all; 56%, very intense] 7. I saw special new meaning in my life. [96%, at all; 61%, very intense] 8. I felt better than ever before in a very special way. [96%, at all; 66%, very intense]

important. Members not only set aside a specific time to meditate, they also practiced it while involved in daily activities, as suggested by the guru. Almost all (99%) did this sometimes and a majority (54%) did it "usually."

The relevance of such experience to participation in a charismatic group may be clarified by considering how these members attribute meaning to their daily experiences. A compelling alteration in a person's subjective state, whether from drugs or to a novel social context, leaves the person open to ascribing new meaning to experiences. This certainly applies to the altered consciousness associated with meditation, which serves as a vehicle for destabilizing old attitudes and preparing the meditator to accept the group's beliefs. It acts to support the group's cohesiveness and stabilize and even enhance a member's acceptance of the group.

As in Raymond's case, meditation also serves as a basis for joining the charismatic group. This is illustrated by the responses of the Divine Light members, who were asked whether the experiences of altered consciousness listed in Table 4-1 had taken place at the time of their conversion. It turned out to be almost as high then as it was during their subsequent meditation, even though their exposure to the group had been modest up to then. A large majority reported that during the conversion period to some degree they "saw something special that no one else could see" (90%) and "heard something special that no one else could hear" (83%). Such experiences must have made them more responsive to the group's influence.

Over the long term of membership, meditation also played an important role in supporting a convert's continuing involvement. An analysis of the relationship between the time members spent in meditation and the decline in their level of neurotic distress revealed that greater meditation time was associated with diminished neurotic distress. This association suggests that the emotional response to meditation acts as a reinforcement for its continued practice.' That is, the more a member meditated, in general, the better the person was likely to feel. Members apparently used meditation to relieve distress, both at scheduled times and on an ad hoc basis. This tranquilizer, as it were, had its own reinforcing qualities and no doubt helped cement commitment to the sect. In this way, it had an addicting effect.

The role of meditation in altering individuals' perspectives on life is shown in an interesting manner by American practitioners of Transcendental Meditation (TM), followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This sect initially had a straightforward approach to achieving' a meditative state, based on a formula in which the meditator concentrated on a personal code word, or mantra. The ability to facilitate relaxation with this technique made TM popular in the early 1970s and aroused interest in both lay and medical communities. Certified trainers would impart the technique to clients who paid for a course of instruction, taught with a minimum of cultic trappings although there were some, such as the secrecy surrounding trainees' mantras. By the mid-1970s, 350 TM training centers were scattered across the nation, with 10,000 persons taking up the practice each month, most of them well educated and successful. Professionals involved in the economic and cultural mainstream reported having transcendent experiences while meditating. One senior editor at a New York publishing house had mild hallucinations if she exceeded the prescribed forty minutes per day, "not frightening ones; just flowers and birds and fountains." 10 Acceptance among health professionals was widespread too, and TM was used to allay everyday tension, provide pain relief in dentistry, and for other clinical purposes."

In time, TM evolved into something of a charismatic movement, with a belief system that transcended the domain of its practice. The scope of the movement broadened considerably with the establishment of Maharishi International University, named after the guru of TM, in Fairfield, Iowa. A variety of unreasonable beliefs came to be accepted as literally true by the more committed members, such as the ability of experienced meditators to levitate. Group meditation was thought to effect direct changes in international political and economic affairs, and even to reduce traffic accidents in remote cities. Indeed, at one point movement leaders mobilized a conclave of thousands of Maharishi's followers who expected by their conjoint efforts to shape the course of ongoing military conflicts in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. 12 In this movement, the altered state associated with meditation clearly contributed to members' acceptance of an unlikely set of beliefs.

Geaves

Note: Ron Geaves is a Professor of Religion at Liverpool Hope University in England. He was one of the earlier students of Prem Rawat. He was formerly Programme Leader and Chair in religious studies at the University of Chester in England and Head of Department at the University of Chichester.

Geaves 2002

Geaves, Ron, From Totapuri to Maharaji: Reflections on a Lineage (Parampara), paper delivered to the 27th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, Regents Park College, Oxford, 22–24 March 2002

Abstract

During the early years of the 1970s, Divine Light Mission experienced phenomenal growth in the West. The teachings of the young Guru Maharaji (now known as Maharaji), based upon an experience of fulfilment arrived at by four techniques that focused attention inward, spread quickly to Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, Japan, South America, Australasia, Canada and the USA. Today, the teachings have gone worldwide to over 80 countries.

This paper will firstly demonstrate that these various scholars who identify Maharaji’s roots as Sant Mat, or more specifically Radhasoami, are mistaken. Secondly, it will show that a more accurate exploration of Maharaji’s historical background provides an excellent opportunity to study the complexity of the various ways of organising such lineages and can demonstrate how intricately major strands of Hinduism can interweave with each other to create new paradigms to assert an ancient teaching capable of transcending discrete religious borders. Thirdly, this investigation of lineage will throw light on the relationship between charisma and institutionalisation in the Indian context and will allow for a revisiting of Gold’s classification of Sant tradition in particular.

[...] the main focus of scholarly interest came from sociologists who were primarily concerned with issues of membership, charisma, and debates concerning cult/sect definition and formation. Very little attention was received from scholars of religion and the little that was received tended to come from those who were aware of North Indian sant tradition and its lineages. The majority of these assumed that the teachings of Maharaji could be placed in the Sant Mat revival, best represented by the Radhasoami movement. Some even went as far as to establish Shri Hans Ji Maharaj’s credentials by asserting that he had been taught the four techniques of Knowledge by Radhasoamis, probably in the period of his life when he relocated in East Punjab from his birthplace near Bodrinath. Olsen (v) asserts that Divine Light Mission was a Radhasoami-inspired movement that had the ‘greatest public American presence’. Dupertuis goes even further and claims that ‘the gurus of Divine Light Mission traced their spiritual lineage from Sant Mat and Radhasoami traditions’ (vi). Melton further compounds the theory by identifying Shri Hans Ji Maharaj’s guru as ‘Dada Guru’ who he claims is of the Sant Mat tradition and who initiated Maharaji’s father into surat shabd yoga (the yoga of the sound current) (vii).

This paper will firstly demonstrate that these various scholars who identify Maharaji’s roots as Sant Mat, or more specifically Radhasoami, are mistaken. Secondly, it will show that a more accurate exploration of Maharaji’s historical background provides an excellent opportunity to study the complexity of the various ways of organising such lineages and can demonstrate how intricately major strands of Hinduism can interweave with each other to create new paradigms to assert an ancient teaching capable of transcending discrete religious borders. Thirdly, this investigation of lineage will throw light on the relationship between charisma and institutionalisation in the Indian context.

The scholarly literature that ascribes a Radhasoami background to the life of Maharaji’s father has been used by a small but vociferous dissatisfied opposition of ex-members as evidence that Maharaji himself is a fraud who has constructed a false account of history that reinvents himself. However, Maharaji’s history is linked to the lineage of Advait Mat, a north Indian cluster of movements which perceive themselves as originating from Totapuri, the teacher of Ramakrishna Paramhans with claimed ancient links back to Shankaracharya through a succession of Das Nami sadhus. Maharaji has referred to this lineage as his own on his website as follows:

Shri Totapuri ji Maharaj (1780-1866) Shri Anandpuri ji Maharaj (1782-1872) Param Hans Dayal Shri Advaitanand ji (1840-1919) Shri Swarupanand ji Maharaj (1884-1936) Yogiraj Param Hans Satgurudev Shri Hans ji Maharaj (1900-1966)

There is no doubt that Shri Hans Ji Maharaj was a prominent disciple of Shri Swarupanand Ji. This was confirmed on field research at Nangli Sahib in Uttar Pradesh in February 2001.

[...]

Conclusion

The lineage from Anand Puri to Maharaji provides an interesting source of research for those interested in the relationship between founders, paramparas and panths. It is clear that the lineage is not proven to be connected to the Radhasoamis although it develops historically in the same period and in the same region of Northern India and has some similarities regarding organisation and symbolic language at various stages of its development. It is also questionable to label the lineage as Advait Mat as opposed to Sant Mat as the term Advait Mat seems to have been developed by the institutionalised developments after the death of Swarupanand Ji. It does not figure in the language of the masters themselves, including Shri Hans Ji Maharaj and his son Maharaji. Although Advaita forms of nirguna doctrine would have permeated the movements which developed particularly under the first two gurus, because of their origins in Das Nami renunciate traditions that emerged from the teachings of Shankacharya, these would have become less important when Swarupanand Ji was alive. His promotion of the teachings on a large scale to the common people of the Punjab brought about both organisational changes and a transformation of the symbolic language used to express the teachings. It is this change which appears to bring the tradition closer to Sant Mat and has probably created the confusion of a Radhasoami connection. The response of the masses who received the techniques from Swarupanand Ji was to declare their master an avatar of Krishna. This is not a usual feature of the nirguna bhakti of northern Sant tradition and probably arises from the Hindu devotion to Krishna in the region combined with the remnants of Advaita symbolic language that focuses on the Bhagavad Gita.

It is certainly possible to label the two other traditions at Anandpur and Nangli Sahib which appeared as offshoots from Swarupanand Ji as Advait Mat to differentiate them from Sant Mat, but each of the masters who formed the lineage from Anand Puri to Maharaji were unique in their own right and are not easily bracketed into any parampara tradition, other than their focus on the need to find a master who is able to transform human existence through correct knowledge of the immanent divine and their promotion of the need for experience. Their lineage is akin to that of single charismatic masters such as Kabir or Nanak who had little interest in founding institutions. The point for scholars of Indian traditions who are interested in the formation of sampradayas, is how the meeting with a charismatic master and the apparent fulfilment of a ‘truth search’ can create the possibility for a leap across traditions. Both Advaitanand Ji and Swarupanand Ji maintained the Das Nami suffix of ‘Puri’ when renaming their renunciates on initiation to the order but neither indicated any particular affiliation to the Das Namis and also used the Sannyasi suffix of ‘Anand’. Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, as a householder guru, dropped the suffix ‘Puri’ completely from his own order of renunciates and used only the ‘Anand’ suffix, this removing any connection to Das Namis. Prem Rawat (Maharaji) has dropped any association to a Hindu renunciate order in recent years and appoints instructors with no lifestyle commitments linked to Indian renunciate orders who assist him in teaching and disseminating the four techniques. It would appear that this kind of fulfilment is able to cross the boundaries of traditional Hindu darshanas and sampradayas and assist in the creation of new forms of both institutional and charismatic organisations.

The various offshoots from Swarupanand Ji demonstrate the complexity of sampradaya formation after the death of such a charismatic master, and as such provide the opportunity for study of the process. As a result of this research, Gold’s categories can be adapted as follows:

a) The solitary figure such as Kabir, Nanak, or Ravidas can become a line of masters whose authority is derived from their own personal charisma and focus on individual experience. An institutionalised parampara need not develop if a strategy of seperating the material inheritance from the spiritual inheritence is developed. In this case, the lineage consists of a series of solitary figures such as exemplified by the succession from Anand Puri to Maharaji.

b) As stated by Gold (viii), a lineage can develop in which the dominant focus of spiritual power is still contained in the living holy man but the institutionalisation process develops alongside charismatic authority. Such a lineage develops into a parampara. This kind of organisation is not manifested in this case study as there was always a loss of the previous master’s material inheritence when the new master succeeded the previous one.

c) A panth, as defined by Gold, where the teachings of the past Sant(s) are claimed to be represented, but the dominant focus of spiritual power now resides in ritual forms and scripture and officiated over by a mahant who looks after the ritual and administration is seen at the progressively institutionalised lineage from Vairaganand Ji in Anandpur. The mahant's charisma is clearly derived from his position, and his traditional connection to the original Sant.

d) A panth can develop around the samadhi of the deceased Sant in which the focus of worship manifests as veneration of the deceased master. Although the shrine will be administered by successors of the sant (either by blood relatives or mahants), their authority derives from the spiritual presence of the dead Sant embodied in the remains and within the follower’s heart. The samadhi panths are looser knit organisations than sectarian institutions and can provide the inspiration for new forms of the traditon to emerge as a result of contact with the blessings of the deceased master. Such shrine forms of religious organisation develop into pilgrimage centres and this can be seen materialising at Nangli Sahib.

More research needs to be done by treating each form of organisation as a unique case study as well as comparative studies. Swarupanand Ji was not an insignificant figure in the history of North Indian nirguna bhakti traditions. Contemporary sources suggest that he had ten thousand followers and over three hundred ashrams in Northern India. Shri Hans Ji Maharaj extended this activity throughout India. Both masters require more scholarly attention to place them in modern Indian religious history. Finally, it is time to reconsider the work of Maharaji who has successfully brought these ancient teachings from India to the world arena and given them such a unique new form in which they are able to be uprooted from their origins in the subcontinent whilst maintaining the essential message of the previous master. Maharaji’s mode of teaching and delivery of the message provides an insight into the iconoclasm, universalism, spontaneity and renewal that was also a feature of the teachings of the mediaeval solitary Sants and he is also an important figure in any assessment of emergent forms of spirituality in contemporary western society.

Notes

(v) Olsen, Roger (1995), ‘Eckankar: From Ancient Science of Soul Travel to New Age Religion’ in Miller, Timothy (ed), America’s Alternative Religions, Albany: State University of New York Press, pp363-364.

(vi) Dupertius, L (1986) ‘ How People Recognise Charisma: The Case of Darshan in Radhasoami and Divine Light Mission’,

(vii) Melton, Gordon J. (ed) (1996 5th edition), Encyclopaedia of American Religions, Gale Research, p.890.

(viii) Gold D., (1987) The Lord as Guru: Hindu Sants in the Northern Indian Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.85.

Geaves 2002/2004

Geaves, Ron, From Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital and Beyond: An Exploration of Change and Adaptation, Nova Religio

The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, March 2004, Vol. 7, No. 3, Pages 45-62

Abstract

The Following article will put forward the argument that it is necessary to take into account the worldview of the insider in order to appreciate the coherence or “rationality” of actions of a religious-spiritual teacher or organization. As a case study, the article examines the transformations that have occurred in the organizational forms utilized by Prem Rawat (a.k.a. Maharaji). While bringing readers up todate with Maharaji’s activities since the 1980s, I argue that these developments owe more to Maharaji’s self-perception of his role as a master and his wish to universalize the message historically located in the teachings of individual sant iconoclasts, than to external or internal pressures brought to bear upon the organizational forms themselves. [...]

Daniel Foss and Ralph Larkin noted that by 1973 [t]he organization had developed a centralized bureaucracy with rampant titleism and a penchant for office forms and organizational charts. Observations of the Mission led us to the conclusion that the primary function of the staff was monitoring of its own activities. In effect, the Mission represented the ultimate parody of bureaucracy in the wider society—functionally rational but substantively irrational. Failures and bungling on the part of the Mission staff were repeatedly demonstrated, yet the symbolic forms of the organizational seriousness and managerial competence had a compelling emotional appeal to both the Mission staff itself and to many potential converts.1 Foss and Larkin were intrigued by the contradiction offered by the manner in which large numbers of young people, including “political radicals, communards, street people, rock musicians, acid-head ‘freaks,’ cultural radicals, [and] drop-outs”2were participating in Divine Light Mission. These young people were participating in and developing an organizational form that displayed many of “the elements of the social patterns of the wider society which they had rejected,” in particular bureaucratic hierarchies. Foss and Larkin explained this anomaly by suggesting that the Mission was able to maintain the support of its ex-dissident members by claiming that it was carrying on revolution by other means and in the process “emphasized formal structure without substantive content.” With this statement, Foss and Larkin declared their own bias in regard to religious or spiritual commitment. Maharaji’s message, which had attracted thousands, was summarily dismissed as possessing no “substantive content” and this was further expressed by the suggestion that the organization was “functionally rational but substantively irrational.”4 Maharaji’s own behavior was described as “nonsensical” and “unpredictable.”5However, the label of “irrationality” applied to new or traditional religious forms needs to be reviewed. It is resonant of crude reductionism sometimes found in the social sciences in regard to religious phenomena, described by Stark as the “old paradigm” in which social scientists “dig as deep as possible” to penetrate the real causes of religious phenomena while dismissing the realm of the sacred.6Stark asks his readers to acknowledge a new paradigm that argues that religion is rooted in the world of the rational and therefore to explore religious explanations for religious phenomena.7 Stark suggests that humans, when faced with choice, choose the “most rational” or reasonable option. In order to understand this process, the motivations and interpretations of the actors must be taken into account. It is only from the “inside” that the degree of rationality or reasonableness can be acknowledged.

[...]

The most useful theory to elucidate the relation between Maharaji’s charismatic authority and his institutions are those provided by postWeberian discourse of sociologists such as Thomas O’Dea,20combined with the work of Indian religion scholars focused specifically on the sant tradition, such as Charlotte Vaudeville and Daniel Gold. Maharaji does not see himself as bound by conventional beliefs or practices of any institutionalized religion or tradition-honored worldview. He is essentially an iconoclast who plots his route by pragmatic decisions to meet the demands and challenges that occur in his public career as a teacher striving to convince people of the value of self-knowledge. It is hard to ascertain exactly where the lines of strategic adaptation and continuation are drawn, except that they seem to lie somewhere around the inviolacy of the teacher/student relationship and Maharaji’s own trust in the efficacy of the techniques to provide individuals with an inner awareness of what is permanent and unchanging within human beings. Although Maharaji does not see himself as part of a tradition or as having to conform to the behavior of any predecessor, in my view, the best way to place him is to identify him with Vaudeville’s definition of the sant. Vaudeville describes a sant as

a holy man of a rather special type, who cannot be accommodated in the traditional categories of Indian holy men—and he may just as well be a woman. The sant is not a renunciate.... He is neither a yoginor a siddha, practices no asanas, boasts of no secret bhij mantrasand has no claim to magical powers. The true sant wears no special dress or insignia, having eschewed the social consideration and material benefits which in India attach to the profession of asceticism.... The sant ideal of sanctity is a lay ideal, open to all; it is an ideal that transcends both sectarian and caste barriers.

However, I wish to make a clear distinction between Sant Mat, often associated with Radhasoami lineages, and individual founder-sants. Although early scholars often identified Maharaji with Sant Mat and even Radhasoami lineages, there is no evidence to link Maharaji or his predecessors with that tradition.22 Sant Mat lineages usually display organizational forms that conform to Gold’s categorization of parampara orpanth. Individual sant-founders in Vaudeville’s terms are generally not concerned with organizational forms or institutionalized religion and display considerable iconoclasm in regard to ritual and doctrinal dimensions. Maharaji fits most aspects of the santcategorization by Vaudeville, even though he does not use this category as a self-definition. If being asant implies an iconoclasm that breaks the bounds of tradition while maintaining an emphasis on the inner experiential dimension, then Maharaji would conform to that definition. However, Maharaji is insistent that he should not be categorized into any traditional definition, including that of sant.

[...]

CONCLUSION

Building on the analysis of Gold and Vaudeville of the sant tradition, it could be argued that Maharaji perceives himself as the solitary sant whose authority derives from his personal charisma and is not part of any overarching formal organization, and does not have to subscribe to any particular worldview. Maharaji’s students echo this position and are united with their teacher on the primary value of personal experience. Gold argues that such figures have little inclination to establish a panth or sectarian institution,38although these may develop later.Thus, any understanding of Maharaji’s motivations would have to take into account the challenge to maintain the purity of his teachings from any sign of institutionalization. In Thomas O’Dea’s terms, this is a classic confrontation between charisma and institutionalization. O’Dea argued that the founder-innovator is only concerned with communicating the message and maintaining the spontaneity of the transcendental experience.39 Although O’Dea perceived these conflicts and tensions chronologically as a way of exploring the development of charismatic authority to institutional authority, an analysis of this new sant phenomenon still at the first stage of development provides an example of how a contemporary santmaster, the first to globalize fully his teachings, grapples with and seeks innovative solutions to the problems of institutionalization. Although there may be pragmatic problems, such as financial stability, the attitudes of the wider society, and the opposition of former practitioners, focusing on these as the prime factors of change and adaptation misses the opportunity for far more significant study of the relationship between charisma and institutionalization. In particular, Maharaji’s movement promises fascinating insights into the fine balance of maintaining the integrity of teaching and experience over the apparently inevitable processes of organizational and sectarian development wherever a sant figure has gathered students around the experience of “self-knowledge” or inner realization of “truth.” Maharaji has chosen a route of perpetual transformation in which organizational forms are created and utilized and then destroyed, thus providing flexibility to deal with rapidly changing social attitudes, to provide pragmatic solutions to internal problems, and above all to keep his students focused on the core message rather than the peripheral requirements of organizational forms.

Geaves in Partridge (2004)

Ron Geaves in Christopher Partridge (Eds.), New Religions: A Guide: New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities pp.201-202, Oxford University Press, USA (2004) ISBN 978-0195220421

(Note: This piece was written by Ron Geaves, confirmed by visiting the library and checking the book). ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Maharaji was originally known as Guru Maharaji and came to fame when he first visited Brtain., Europe and the United States as a 13-year old in 1971. His message of personal charisma spread rapidly among members of the 1960's counterculture. In the early 1970s's Divine Light Mission, the movement made up of Maharaji's followers was the fastest-growing group in North America and Britain.

[...]

Maharaji had originally taken on the role of master after his father's death in 1966. He was only eight years old but the position was not hereditary. It is stated that his father had chosen him as the person best suited to carry the teachings forward in an international arena as well as in India. Maharaji's childhood is full of accounts of how he would encourage his father's followers to practice the teachings and speak publicly at his father's events. However, Maharaji's young age meant that his mother and eldest brother effectively controlled the Divine Light Mission in India. As Maharaji grew older and began to establish his teachings worldwide he increasingly desired to manifest his own vision of development and growth. This conflict resulted in a split between Maharaji and his family, ostensibly caused by his mother's inability to accept Maharaji's marriage to an American follower rather than the planned traditional arranged marriage.

Thorough the 1980's and up to the present, Maharaji has traveled around the world continuously meeting with interested people and inspiring those who practise his teachings. In the 1980's, Divine Light Mission was disbanded and Elan Vital was established to more effectively promote Maharaji's teachings in a way that was free from any particular religious or cultural association. Maharaji's teachings are not new but belong to an age-old wisdom tradition that is continuously renewed under the inspiration of a living master. Thus, although parallels to Maharaji's teachings are found amongst such figures as Guru Nanak (the founder of Sikhism, Kabir (a 15th century Indian Sant) amd Rumi (1207-73; a Persian Sufi poet and founder of the Mevlevi brotherhood), they exist independently of any tradition and do not rely upon any requirement to be authenticated by Scriptures or authorities sanctified by the past.

However, at the heart of Maharaji's teachings lies the simplest message that the human quest for fulfillment can be resolved by turning inward to discover a constant source of contentment and joy within. This message is supported by four techniques, together known as Knowledge, which provide the practical application that allow the practitioner the possibility of the experience spoken about by Maharaji.

[...]

He is insistent that it is not the product of any one culture or the property of any religious tradition and that it can be practised by anyone. Consequently, Maharaji asserts that he is not teaching a religion and there are no particular rituals, sacred days, pilgrimages, sacred places, doctrines, scriptures or specific dress codes, dietary requirements or any other dimension associated with a religious lifestyle.

[...] Maharaji himself does not conform to any stereotype of a religious or spiritual leader but is highly committed to his conviction that Knowledge is effective and therefore he promotes its possibility to as many people around the world as are interested. [...]

After initiating a major organisational and structural transformation, Maharaji continues to promote the availability of Knowledge as in the heyday of the Divine Light Mission in the 1970s, but without the attendant Indian cultural accretions.

Geaves 2006

Geaves, Ron, Globalization, charisma, innovation, and tradition: An exploration of the transformations in the organisational vehicles for the transmission of the teachings of Prem Rawat (Maharaji), 2006, Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies, 2 44-62

See http://www.asanas.org.uk/files/002geaves.pdf for full text.

Hunt

Stephen J. Hunt Alternative Religions: A Sociological Introduction (2003), pp.116-7, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 0-7546-3410-8

The leader of the Divine Light Mission, the Guru Maharaji, was 13 years old when he spectacularly rose to fame in the early 1970's. It was his young age which made him different from other eastern gurus who had established similar Hindu-inspired movements at the time. He was the son of Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, who began the DLM in India in 1960, based on the teachings of his own variety of enlightenment through the acquisition of spiritual knowledge. When his father died in 1966, the Guru Maharaji announced himself as the new master and started his own teaching. His global tour in 1971 helped to establish a large following in Britain and the USA. In 1973, he held what was intended to have been a vast, much publicized event in the Houston Astrodome. 'Millenium '73' was mean to launch the spiritual millenium, but the event attracted very few and had little wider influence.

Perhaps because of this failure, Maharaji transformed his initial teachings in order to appeal to a Western context. He came to recognize that the Indian influences on his followers in the West were a hindrance to the wider acceptance of his teachings. He therefore changed the style of his message and relinquished the the Hindu tradition, beliefs, and most of its original eastern religious practices. Hence, today the teachings do not concern themselves with reincarnation, heaven, or life after death. The movement now focuses entirely on "Knowledge", which is a set of simple instructions on how adherents should live. This Westernization of an essentially eastern message is not seen as a dilemma or contradiction. In the early 1980's, Maharaji altered the name of the movement to Elan Vital to reflect this change in emphasis. Once viewed by followers as Satguru or Perfect Master, he also appears to have surrendered his almost divine status as a guru. Now, the notion of spiritual growth is not derived, as with other gurus, from his personal charisma, but from the nature of his teachings and its benefit to the individual adherents to his movement. Maharaji also dismantled the structure of ashrams (communal homes).

The major focus of Maharaji is on stillness, peace, and contentment within the individual, and his 'Knowledge' consists of the techniques to obtain them. Knowledge, roughly translated, means the happiness of the true self-understanding. Each individual should seek to comprehend his or her true self. In turn, this brings a sense of well-being, joy, and harmony as one comes in contact with one's "own nature." The Knowledge includes four secret meditation procedures: Light, Music, Nectar and Word. The process of reaching the true self within can only be achieved by the individual, but with the guidance and help of a teacher. Hence, the movement seems to embrace aspects of world-rejection and world-affirmation. The tens of thousands of followers in the West do not see themselves as members of a religion, but the adherents of a system of teachings that extol the goal of enjoying life to the full.

For Elan Vital, the emphasis is on individual, subjective experience, rather than on a body of dogma. The teachings provide a kind of practical mysticism. Maharaji speaks not of God, but of the god or divinity within, the power that gives existence. He has occasionally referred to the existence of the two gods—the one created by humankind and the one which creates humankind. Although such references apparently suggest an acceptance of a creative, loving power, he distances himself and his teachings from any concept of religion. It is not clear whether it is possible to receive Knowledge from anyone other than Maharaji. He claims only to encourage people to "experience the present reality of life now." Leaving his more ascetic life behind him, he does not personally eschews material possessions. Over time, critics have focused on what appears to be his opulent lifestyle and argue that it is supported largely by the donations of his followers. However, deliberately keeping a low profile has meant that the movement has generally managed to escape the gaze of publicity that surrounds other NRMs.

Kemeny

Kemeny, Jim On Foss, Daniel A. and Ralph W. Larkin. 1978. "Worshiping the Absurd: The Negation of Social Causality among the Followers of Guru Maharaj Ji." "Sociological Analysis" 39, 2: 157-164, Sociological Analysis, Vol. 40, No. 3, (Autumn, 1979), pp. 262-264

Participant observation studies are fraught with difficulties, even when conducted on relatively straightforward subjects such as youth gangs, public bar behaviour or industrial work groups. The central problem in participant observation is to maintain a balance between becoming so involved in the participation that objectivity is lost and remaining so detached so that observation only yields a relatively superficial and sometimes mistaken interpretation of the subject matter. The study of religious movements poses particularly acute problems of involvement and detachment by virtue of the centrality of a system of beliefs and experiences which provide the entire basis of, and rationale for, such phenomena. Indeed, if we are to understand religious movements or cults at all, participant observation is almost the only manner in which meaningful data can be collected. It is for this reason that participant observational research by trained sociologists into a movement such as the Divine Light Mission (DLM) is to be welcomed since it is both methodologically highly problematic and potentially of great value. Unfortunately, judging by Foss and Larkin's article, their research falls sadly short of the high standards needed to ensure that a reasonably objective picture can be drawn of the DLM. The basic problem in Foss and Larkin's presentation is that they have neither identified sufficiently with members of the DLM to enable them to produce sensitive data, nor maintained sufficient detachment to permit them to exercise objectivity in the organization and interpretation of the data.

Instead, it is clear that the researchers have reacted antipathetically towards the DLM nd thus become emotionally involved in their research in a manner which precludes both sensitive, insightful observation and objective analysis. This is most concretely manifested in the highly emotive language used by Foss and Larkin to describe their observations. Expressions such as "absurd," "preposterous," "nonsensical" and "ludi- crous," tell us more about the predispositions of the researchers than about the nature of the subject matter. Indeed, the deeply hostile presentation is itself sufficient to cast considerable doubt upon the objectivity with which this particular piece of participant observational research was conducted.

Equally serious, there is a complete absence of data of any kind-observed (e.g., patterns of behaviour) or statistical-other than anecdotal. The paper gives no informa- tion on the organizational structure of the DLM which is described as "... a highly incongruent, even self-contradictory organization" and "... the ultimate parody of bureaucracy in the wider society" (159) other than to define it as "... a centralized bureaucracy with rampant titleism .. ." and to argue that the main function of the staff was to monitor its own activities (159). Neither are there any data even of the most rudimentary kind on the socio-economic background of members, nor the various different forms of participation which are possible in the DLM. Most surprising of all, in view of the dependence by the researchers on participant observation, there is no description of the central activities of satsang, service, and meditation, which, for mem- bers, provide the whole rationale and basis for the organization. (For a useful description of this aspect of the DLM see Messer (1976).) Without an understanding of what these mean to premies and other participants most of the purpose of conducting a participant observational analysis is vitiated. Another important problem with the analysis presented by Foss and Larkin concerns the theoretical focus of the research. Foss and Larkin describe the purpose of their study as ". .. an attempt to understand the fundamental reasons for the existence of the Divine Light Mission . ." (158).

This suggests quite clearly that the main concern is a very broad one involving placing the analysis into a general framework so that the DLM can be understood as part of wider social forces at work to produce a range of cultic phenomena of which the DLM is only one manifestation. However, it is clear, both from the introduction and the general drift of the discussion that the principle focus of the study is in fact a much narrower one. Foss and Larkin appear not to be interested in the DLM as such, but only insofar as it represents a means for reintegrating certain social groups into mainstream U.S. society. Foss and Larkin focus upon the way in which the DLM was used by "freaks" and other youth culture elements from the various radical movements of the 1960s once these movements disintegrated. This is therefore not so much a study of the DLM as a study of one strand of social recruitment into the DLM. Yet the discussion is ambiguously generalized in such a manner that it appears as a critique of the whole movement. Indeed, Foss and Larkin's previous work in this area (1976, 1977) suggests that their interest is much more in the study of youth movements than in the DLM itself.

The significance of this is that much of the criticism which Foss and Larkin level against the DLM is more accurately a criticism of certain elements in the DLM rather than of the movement itself. This is precisely the sort of ambiguity of focus which would have been resolved had a careful participant observational study been carried out. The overall impression which Foss and Larkin give is that the DLM is a monolithic movement consisting entirely or at least overwhelmingly of "... political radicals, acid-head freaks (cultural radicals), communards, street people, rock musicians, drop-outs and inhibited types (sic) .. ." (Foss and Larkin, 1978: 157).

There is no doubt that the DLM did recruit a large number of such elements during the early nineteen seventies, especially in the U.S.A. However, this is to gloss over the diversity of recruitment to the DLM and to equate the DLM with what the authors call "post-movement groups" which arose in response to the decline of the nineteen sixties youth movement (Foss & Larkin, 1978: 157). This points to a fundamental weakness in Foss and Larkin's presentation: its essential ethnocentricity. The study is not so much a study of the DLM or even of ex-youth movement elements in the DLM as of ways in which the DLM was influenced by such patterns of recruitment in the first half of the nineteen seventies in the U.S.A. The DLM is, of course, a movement with deep spiritual roots and a long tradition in Indian history. However, during the general (and by no means the first) revival of interest in oriental religion in the western world in the last twenty years, the DLM, like many other movements such as Hari Krishna and Transcendental Meditation, has become a world- wide movement. It would have been much more to the point had Foss and Larkin wanted to understand "the fundamental reasons for the existence of the DLM" if they had placed it in the context of other similar movements and their significance in industrial societies rather than ex-youth movement in the U.S.A. Indeed such an analysis would have also shed considerable light on Foss and Larkin's main concern. Nor would such a context have been precluded by the participant observational nature of the research. One of the most notable features of the DLM is the importance of international festivals to which premies come from all over the world to be in the presence of large numbers of meditating followers, mahatmas and Guru Maharaj Ji. Such interna- tional festivals would have provided an excellent opportunity to broaden the investigation into some of the implications of the DLM's international structure as a movement, such as the high proportion of middle-class middle-aged premies in certain Latin American countries.

The diversity and complexity of the DLM is not at all apparent from Foss and Larkin's description. The emphasis in the study upon young ashram dwellers plays down the wide basis of recruitment to the DLM among more mature (especially middle class) elements, including professionals, housewives and other social groups who essentially retain their normal lifestyles and restrict their participation to weekly evening satsang meetings and the occasional festival. The study of such groups and how they tend to become involved in the DLM may well have shed considerable light on the fundamental appeal of the DLM and its role in modern society. In summary, then, Foss and Larkin's study is not a study of the DLM. Rather it is a deeply hostile participant observational study into ex-youth movement recruitment into the DLM during the early nineteen-seventies in the U.S.A. The two most serious consequences of this are that the study is methodologically flawed and theoretically misfocussed. "Worshipping the absurd" has therefore failed to understand the basic significance of the DLM, and, more seriously, misrepresented it. Sadly, a golden oppor- tunity to further our understanding of a significant religious movement has been missed.

Kent From Slogans To Mantras

From Slogans To Mantras

Preface

One night in 1974, I watched in disbelief as men and women of my generation paid homage to an unimpressive guru who equated levels of spiritual knowledge with increasingly large sizes of planes. I was somewhere in Philadelphia, packed so tightly into a church pew that I literally was sitting on top of myself - one leg had to be turned sideways in order to fit between the people on either side of me. As a twenty two year old hippie, I noticed that many others in the audience looked like "freaks" (as we called ourselves) and that there was little discernible difference between the "freak" women and the "earth mother" appearance of the guru's female devotees. In sharp contrast, the male devotees looked like business school aspirants but I realized that, not long before, they probably had been scruffy and long haired like me.

One by one, relatives and others in the so called Perfect Master's inner circle strode to the microphone and proclaimed the spiritual power of their guru's message. Every indication was that, at least in his devotees' eyes, he was no ordinary young man. Indeed, in the middle of the event, one of the organizers asked the audience for use of an available car, because he needed to go somewhere to pick up a pillow for the guru's lotus feet.

Aside from my own excruciating body cramps, I remember little else about the build up for the guru except for one grand proclamation, from a slightly older member of the guru's entourage. Confidently, clearly, this man announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the Lord! He was in New York City last night, and he will be in this church this evening!" Only years later did I realize that this confident speaker had been none other than Rennie Davis, who had earned the respect and admiration of my generation by his strident opposition to the Vietnam War. In any case, all this hype proved irritating, because I had come not to hear praises from his entourage but rather to experience the Perfect Master himself.

I was profoundly disappointed. Indeed, I found his poorly delivered message to be banal. Drawing an analogy between airplanes and spiritual knowledge, he taught the audience something along the lines that, "If you are a native living in the jungles of Africa and a Piper Cub flies over your head, then you will say 'Oh, what a big airplane.' But ahhh, there are 747s!" I did not appreciate his characterization of African tribespeople, nor was I impressed with his clumsy analogy. Consequently, I could not fathom what so many of my peers found inspiring about this kid, and I was wholly unprepared for what happened after the presentation concluded.

Riding home with a friend that evening in the back seat of a car, I listened incredulously as my companions spoke glowingly about the message that they had just received. In fact, they were so moved by the guru's words that they made tentative plans to return the next day to pay homage to him by kissing his feet. I was flabbergasted, stunned. How could anyone have thought that this guy was a spiritual master? Unable to comprehend why anyone had been impressed by the amateurish performance through which I had suffered, I pondered this mystery for years.

For the past quarter of a century, I have remembered that disorienting night as I have tried to interpret crucial experiences of my generation. My first attempt at doing so (in scholarly form, at least) was an article entitled "Puritan Radicalism and the New Religious Organizations: Seventeenth Century England and Contemporary America" (Kent 1987). More to the point was an article that appeared the following year, "Slogan Chanters to Mantra Chanters: A Mertonian Deviance Analysis of Conversion to the Religious Organizations of the Early 1970s" (Kent 1988). An edited version of this article was subsequently published in book form as "Slogan Chanters to Mantra Chanters: A Deviance Analysis of Youth Religious Conversion in the Early 1970s" (Kent 1992). Finally, I developed additional ideas in "Radical Rhetoric and Mystical Religion in the Late Vietnam War Era" (Kent 1993), based on a paper presented at the Vietnam Anti-war Movement Conference: The Charles DeBenedetti Memorial Conference at the University of Toledo (Toledo, Ohio) in May, 1990. I express my gratitude to Sociological Analysis (now Sociology of Religion), Rutgers University Press, and Religion for granting me permission to include sections of these articles in this larger study.

Although my own professional training is in religious studies and now I teach in a sociology department, I realize that this book may have its greatest appeal to students of postwar American (and to some extent Canadian) popular culture. In my previous academic studies I have developed the theoretical frameworks and concepts that lay behind my interpretations, but in this book (for the most part) I have set theory aside and allowed very colorful material to speak for itself. The period upon which I concentrate - the early 1970s - remains relatively unexplored, shadowed as those years are by the intensity of the wild, wonderful, and tragic decade before it. The 1960s, however, were not my time not really. My friends and I entered young adulthood as one decade slid into another, and we only got to explore ourselves and our world as we watched the 1960s fade. Yet our own era around the end of the Vietnam War was filled with excitement and oddities, all of which require their own place as the record of our times.

The era about which I write is sufficiently close to our own that I was able to have access to a wide range of sources upon which to build my argument. Along with several hundred books from or about the 1960s and early 1970s, I consulted extensively both academic and journalistic articles about the late Vietnam War period (although I cannot hope to have gathered and examined everything). Perhaps the most important methodological decision I made was to rely heavily upon commentaries that appeared in the underground and alternative press. I began this aspect of my research by doing systematic searches of youth religious groups through the Alternative Press Index at the Library of Congress. After tracking down and photocopying particular items, I browsed thousands of additional alternative press pages that the Library of Congress has on microfilm, in the compilation by University Microfilms International (1985) entitled Underground Press Collection 1963 - 1985. No doubt I missed many articles, but the number of pages that I examined from a wide array of alternative publications convinced me that I identified central arguments and key items.

Beyond these extensive media searches, I collected over twenty five file cabinet drawers of primary documents, photocopies, and related ephemera from many of the alternative religions that were active in the United States and Canada during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I supplemented my own collection on these new religions by examining files at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley especially the Bancroft's excellent Social Protest Collection and the Institute for the Study of American Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Finally, I needed to hear accounts from people who actually had passed through the transition about which I was writing. Consequently, I used social networks of both current and former members of these religious groups to locate people whose sectarian involvement came after periods of political activism. I taped twenty interviews with people who followed the politics to religion pattern, and all of these tapes now are transcribed and have been checked for accuracy against the audio recordings Excerpts from these interviews appear throughout chapters 4 and 5.

Several institutions provided resources that allowed me to conduct research in various locations in the United States and Canada. Two grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) allowed me to gather documents and conduct interviews for research on Canadian "cults" and "new religions," and while doing so I frequently collected research for this project. The University of Alberta provided transcription assistance, release time from classroom responsibilities, teaching assistants, and various forms of support for my document collection efforts. Over the years, many graduate (and occasionally undergraduate) students have aided me by locating countless references in libraries. Among them were Rob Cartwright, Albert Chu, Deana Hall, Theresa Krebs, Jo Lambda, (now Dr.) David Long, (now Dr.) Jane Milliken, Ayse Oncu, and Michael Peckham. Research assistants who provided invaluable service included Lou Bell, Vanessa Cosco, Ken Hutton, Susan Hutton, Jennifer McMullen, Kyla Rae, Elaine Seier, Lori Shortreed, and Kara Thompson. My wife has edited and critiqued various drafts, and has tolerated a writing schedule that usually brought inspirations only after midnight. My long suffering parents financed various research escapades that contributed to this book, and at times even have driven hundreds of miles to assist me. Their love is never forgotten and always cherished.

Finally, special thanks, and indeed the dedication of this book, goes to a person whose direct influence over me had waned by the time I began serious research on this topic. While I was a graduate student, Dr. Robert Blumstock supported me through very difficult periods, and I often wonder whether I would have made it without his honorable and decent presence. My lifelong gratitude extends to him, and I deeply regret that he did not know about my book dedication plans when he died during the spring of 1995.

Radical Rhetoric and Eastern Religions

Divine Light Mission

Nowhere was the new prioritizing of religion or spirituality over politics more dramatic than among followers (called "premies") of the adolescent Guru Maharaj Ji, who was born December 10, 1957 (for a brief "official" biography, see "Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji?" 1973). Rennie Davis's conversion to the "Perfect Master" (as the guru's followers called him) sparked bewilderment and anger within the New Left, and during Davis's speaking tours on behalf of the Divine Light Mission (DlM), activists and radicals alternatively ridiculed him and sat in dazed wonderment as he propounded his message about the new path to peace ("Rennie Davis on Tour" 1973, 2; Rossman 1979, 17). Davis told a Berkeley crowd comprised of many former and current activists that "the Perfect Master teaches perfection, and will bring perfection on Earth not after the Millennium, but right now, in three years. A. revolutionary perfection, realizing all our ideals of peace and justice, brought about not by struggle and conflict but by the perfect working of a perfect organization" (Rossman 1979, 16). In essence, Davis offered his former comrades a career move into the ideal organization, from which they finally would achieve the heretofore elusive goals of the 1960s. After people received "the knowledge" that Maharaj Ji imparted to his followers, Davis insisted, "then we can do what the street people sought in the sixties abolish capitalism and other systems that oppress" (Davis, quoted in Lewis and Thomas 1973). The primary political word that Maharaj Ji and his organization used to attract disaffected activists and radicals was "peace." As it stated in various ways, the DLM offered converts the road to achieving peace in a manner as universal and grand as they ever had dreamt of accomplishing in the 1960s. In typical fashion, the guru's posters advertising his September 9, 1972, appearance at the Oakland City Auditorium boldly proclaimed "IMAGINE WHAT IS PEACE / COME AND REALIZE THE PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE." On the application form for Millennium '73, the DLM's major media event of the early 1970s, the teenaged guru said, "I declare I will establish peace in this world." 6

During the event itself, held at the Houston Astrodome, a giant video screen behind the main stage showed a barrage of shots from the tumultuous 1960s assassinations, riots, peace protests, and Vietnam War footage (Levine 1974, 48; Gray 1973, 39; see also Kent 1987, 22 - 23). When the DLM's newspaper reflected upon the Houston event a few months after it was over, it again contrasted the contentious political events of the preceding decade the civil rights movement, VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), the October 1969 Vietnam Moratorium, draft dodging, and the Vietnam War itself with the guru's message of peace: "Give me your love, I will give you peace. Come to me, I will relieve you of your suffering. I am the source of peace in this world" ("Story" 1973, 9).

Various accounts from the period suggest that many former protesters accepted the guru's promise for peace.7 Prior to his own conversion, Rennie Davis met numerous leftist veterans in the DLM, and their presence helped him to decide to explore further the guru's message. While visiting the group's ashram in India, I kept getting more and more freaked - the whole thing stank of fraud. But there were about 60 western young people at Prem Nagar [near the Himalayan Mountains], and I kept having these great raps with them. People would come up to me and say "Far out - I was with you in the streets of Chicago," or "Good to see you again, last time I saw you was at May Day." Slowly my resistance began to break down as I saw that these great people were really into this kid. So I decided I would at least try and receive knowledge. (Davis, quoted in Kelley 1973b, 35) 8 In turn, Davis's conversion influenced other activists to explore Maharaj Ji's teachings (Kelley 1973a, 9). Former activist Sophia Collier read about Davis's new direction in a copy of the DLM's newspaper, Divine Times. From the article, she learned that Davis now felt that the work of the peace movement, in which he had labored so long, would not bring about society wide changes. Instead, he "envisioned a spiritual movement with the aim of raising the collective consciousness of the nation as the first step toward any other meaningful change." Although this idea was not really new to me, when I read it in [Divine Times] it seemed to click. Maybe Divine Light Mission could help me with both my personal spiritual aspirations and my hopes for the world. (Collier 1978,111) Other prominent activists and radicals who converted to Maharaj Ji included Michael Donner, whose term as vice president of the DLM was interrupted in 1975 by a twelve month imprisonment (as a "Beaver 55" member) for destroying draft board files and erasing Dow Chemical's computer tapes.9 Followers of Guru Maharaj Ji march in downtown Houston in early November 1973, in anticipation of Millenium '73. (© Houston Chronicle)

Rennie Davis, former antiwar Protester turned Divine Light Mission premie, speaks at the Millennium '73 extravaganza in Houston (which he helped coordinate) on Nov. 11, 1973. During the event, Davis told the crowd of about 22,000 attenders: "All I can say is, honestly, very soon now, every single human being will know the one who was waited for by every religion of all times has actually come." (© Gerald Israel, Archive Photos) Sandy Meadows, managing editor of the DLM's publication And It is Divine, had been a member of the Denver Weathermen Collective (Haines 1973-74, 8). Steve O'Neill, who in 1973 was a twenty five year old DLM organizer in Boston, was an ex GI and "a revolutionary of sorts" before his conversion (Kelley 1973b, 54). Finally, the DLM's director of public relations in 1973, Richard Profumo, had served a seven month prison sentence for draft evasion (Levine 1974, 42).

Michael Rossman captured the logic of the attraction that Maharaj Ji held for former activists when he observed:

If Rennie was a heretic, his heresy was not one of ends, but of means; and it struck us where our faith is weakest. We have all been struggling for personal fulfillment and the social good in the same brutal climate. Few now can escape the inadequacy of the political metaphor to inspire and guide even our political actions, let alone to fulfill them. It is not just a matter of the correct line; the problem is with process. All is accomplished by organizing. But was there an activist present [in Davis's Berkeley audience] who had not felt despair, simple and terrifying, at the frustrations and impossibilities of working in the organizations we form: their outer impotence, their inner conflicts and ego games and wasted energy, the impoverishments of spirit which lead us to drop out of them again and again? Here Rennie was, proclaiming the perfect means to our various ends, the ideal, impossible Organization, working in perfect inner harmony, and outer accomplishment. Lay down your arms, your suffering, and the Master will give you bliss. And yet to work in the Left, to be of the Left, has meant to bear these arms, this suffering; we have known no other way. (Rossman 1979, 22) For Davis and many other political activists and radicals, the rhetoric of the DLM provided hope that an ungraspable and ill defined "peace" still could be achieved, even as the organization's staunchest workers submitted themselves to the absolutist authority of a guru who retreated from confronting institutions that fostered war. As one of many DLM ironies, the tents and water tanks for its 1974 New England rummage sale and festival were provided by the National Guard (Boulanger 1974).

"Blissed out premies" attend Guru Maharaj Ji's Millennium '73 in the Houston Astrodome, Nor. 8-10, 1973. This photo is a still-shot from a one hour national broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service entitled "The Lord of the Universe, "Feb. 24, 1974. (Photo courtesy of Urban Archives, Temple Univ., Philadelphia) Conclusion

Page 170. High upon the Movement's list of "spiritual con men" or in this case, boys was Guru Maharaj Ji. Caricatured in the Ann Arbor Sun as "Fifteen-year old Perfect Body, Satnudu Haharaz, Jr.," Maharaj Ji's ownership of two Lear jets and three Rolls Royces led Madison, Wisconsin's Free For All to label him "Guru Maha Ripoff" (see Haines 1973 174, 8; "Guru Maha Ripoff" 1973,18 ).14 An especially vitriolic attack against Maharaj Ji and premie Rennie Davis appeared in an anarchist magazine in Tucson, Arizona, which spoke about the "hocus pocus artists" who "are the direct descendants of the carnival rip off snake oil sellers and other mountebanks.... Some, like two ton butterball boy 'avatar' Guru Mararaji Gee whiz, even have the effrontery to state that since they are 'God' themselves, they deserve to ride in Rolls Royce automobiles and live like kings". . . . The "very vocal barker" for the guru was Davis himself, who "enjoys an extension of his time in the limelight and his role of apologist for the Gooroo and his various enterprises. Some people have an insatiable need for power trips and publicity and the more absurd the proposition, the more challenging their ability to rationalize their involvement and explain it. Anything so long as they are at or near the center of vast attention" (McNamara 1974, 6-7).

Other articles were critical of him in a more ominous tone, as they spoke about the fascism or Nazism that reporters felt within his organization. After noting that the "Guru's pig [i.e., police] force" bore the Orwellian "newspeak" tide "World Peace Corps," Ann Arbor Sun reporter Steve Haines indicated that, at Millennium '73, "15,000 gurunoids shouting their praise of the boy god Groomraji with their arms high in the air sound just like the Nuremburg [sic] rally flicks of the '30s that used to chill my spine in college" (Haines 1973-74, 9).15 Similarly, an Augur reporter confessed that "his followers alarmed me. I was frightened by the total abdication of self direction, free will, and thought that they displayed. Like automatons they hook into a chant started by a leader and end with their arms shooting upwards in salute" (Massoglia 1974, 7). A few days after a reporter from Detroit's underground newspaper Fifth Estate took inspiration from the Yippies and "pie killed" Guru Maharaj Ji, two irate premies shattered the writer's skull with what probably was a blackjack (see Kelley 1973c, 1974b).

In early 1979, writer Peter Marin reproduced a long excerpt from "a good friend of mine, a poet who has always been torn between radical politics and mysticism," and who also was about to leave the Divine Light Mission organization. Marin let his unnamed friend reflect upon the nature of ashram life as a premie in service to "the Lord of the Universe":

The decision in me to hang it up is the one bright fight within me for the time being. Because what is actually the case is that I've lived very much the lifestyle of 1984. Or of Mao's China - or of Hitler's Germany. Imagine for a moment a situation where every single moment of your day is programmed. You begin with exercise, then meditation, then a communal meal. Then the service (the work each member does).... You work six days a week, nine to six - then come home to dinner and then go to two hours of spiritual discourse, then meditate. There is no leisure. It is always a group consciousness. You discuss nothing that isn't directly related to "the knowledge." You are censured if you discuss any topics of the world. And, of course, there is always the constant focus on the spiritual leader. Marin's friend continued by asking, rhetorically: What is the payoff? Love. You are allowed access to a real experience of transcendence. There is a great emotional tie to your Guru your Guru, being the center stage of everything you do, becomes omnipresent. Everything is ascribed to him. He is positively supernatural after a while. Any normal form of causal thinking breaks down. The ordinary world with its laws and orders is proscribed. It is an "illusion." It is an absolutely foolproof system. Better than Mao, because it delivers a closer knit cohesiveness than collective criticism and the red book. (Marin 1979,43-44) 16 By the end of the 1970s, Marin's friend realized that he had been living within the boundaries of extremist religious constraints, and he could do it no longer. 17 Earlier in the decade, several reporters also noted the fascist elements in the new religious groups. Writing in Toronto's Alternative to Alienation, Bill Holloway observed that "in spiritual groups, we can find the same forms of the authoritarian personality seen in Nazism: the ardent supporters who have found a solution to their ineffectiveness, the followers who would rather join than be alone, and the leaders and sub leaders who exert control and use invalidation" (Holloway 1976, 20). Louise Billotte, in a piece that initially appeared in the Berkeley Barb, realized that "absolute faith in the guru does lead to fascistic manipulation.

Page 178.

Antagonism between activists and former comrades turned converts was, at times, intense and bitter. The Berkeley Barb, for example, berated these converts, and then added a word of caution about them: "In the leftwing quest for spiritual rebirth, as in Left politics, we repeatedly find brothers who are driven to imitate the enemy, to become hard and tight, crewcut lifedeniers, weatherpriests, young authoritarians for freedom-ostensibly in the name of love and liberty... Such people bear watching. As defectors from our scene to The Other Side, they have inside understanding of us which allows them to cause trouble if they wish to do so" (Poland 1970, 12). Strident leftist and editor Paul Krassner certainly felt that Rennie Davis was causing trouble for the Movement, and at the DLM's Millennium '73 in Houston, he challenged Davis to debate the idea "that Guru Maharaj Ji diverts young people from social responsibility to personal escape." Krassner even accused Maharaj Ji of being "either a conscious or unconscious agent of the Government, which was only too glad to see tens of thousands of its critics Channeled into devotional activities" (Morgan 1973, 100). 23

Earlier in 1973, when Krassner rocked the New Left with his suspicions that Davis himself was a CIA operative, he also repeated William Burroughs's (inaccurate) claim that Scientology had been infiltrated by the CIA and raised the possibility that the federal spy agency was behind Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's trip with the Beach Boys (Krassner 1973, 5).24 (Suspicions about the connection between Maharishi's "implicit support of authoritarianism" and the CIA had been raised five years earlier by Allen Ginsberg [1968]). Yipster Stew Albert was kinder to Davis when he wrote him an open letter in September 1973, but he, too, was profoundly disturbed by the latter's conversion:

Right now many Americans are feeling low, down, and impotent. They feel the politics of the 60's have failed, and that all politics must fail. So a lot of young people are looking for Christs, Babas, Swamis, and gurus to pull them out of a never ending bummer. Rennie, I wish these people would realize how much we accomplished in the 60's. It's all a matter of self confidence, of believing ourselves, the regular flesh and bones of humanity and not the abracadabra of charlatans who want us to feel weak so they can hustle our bread and create a jet set of Divine Millionaires. So, Rennie, I have to figure out how an old buddy of mine with whom I have smoked many joints got caught up in something so silly and inevitably dangerous. (Albert 1973, 8) It is doubtful that Albert ever fully succeeded in understanding why Davis chose this new direction. Davis's unswerving devotion to his guru drove an irreparable wedge between he and other masterminds of the Movement, including another friend and fellow radical Tom Hayden:

Listening to Rennie [recount his conversion story], I thought I was going to be ill. Here was my best friend in front of me, present in form only, his mind gone somewhere else. I believed in mystical experiences and a religious dimension of life, but not prostration in front of a fifteen year old with a taste for Rolls Royces.... We said good bye that night and didn't see each other again until the Chicago contempt retrial that October [1973], when there was a last, wild and tumultuous meeting of the Conspiracy defendants. We tried political ar gument, hard denunciation, and emotional pleading to stop Rennie's new direction. We failed. For several years after that I couldn't spend time with him because I was too upset. (Hayden 1988, 462-63) Apparently, Davis convinced another friend and Conspiracy defendant, Jerry Rubin, to visit the Millennium '73 affair, but Rubin's reaction was almost as strong as Hayden's As he left the Astrodome, Rubin muttered, "I see very littie positive out of this. Meditation is good for you, but not if it leads to this" (Haines 1973 74,9). Already plagued by ideological divisions, the Movement now had religious factions tearing it apart. The hostility among various new religious groups was so intense that one participant observer lamented: "I could see a time when we would have religious wars. These people were at each other's throats. All their energies were being dissipated in battles between sects. A waste" (Gortner 1974, 133). After leaving Davis at Millennium '73 and heading for the parking lot, Rubin probably had to run the gauntlet of either Jesus freaks by the dozen or Hare Krishnas by the score (McRae 1974, 4; Haines 1973 74, 9). Both groups outside were protesting against the guru inside, with Christians calling him the "antichrist" and Krishna devotees offering premies a different path to peace. A few weeks earlier, in late October, the Krishnas had begun their campaign against the Divine Light Mission by distributing leaflets that "denounced 15 year old Guru Maharaj Ji as a fraud, a rascal and a small pudgy boy of questionable character" (Cunningham 1973, 8). Eventually, Maharaj Ji's World Peace Corps security force got thirty five Krishnas arrested, an act that colorfully illustrates how divisive religious ideology was among various groups that had drawn upon the New Left both for personnel and for rhetoric. Not surprisingly, many leftists shared the religious sects' negative judgements of the adolescent guru and his message, albeit for different reasons. In a rare moment of uncoordinated mutual hostility, "an unlikely coalition of disgruntled Hare Krishnas, Jesus freaks, and assorted leftists" heckled Davis during an October 1973 talk at Portland State University (Isserman 1973).25

Similar confrontations took place between diehard leftists and new religionists in other parts of the country. In autumn 1970, for example, "a band of Jesus people made up of members of the CWLF, the Jesus Mobilization Committee of Marin and other [San Francisco] Bay communes, started such a row at the West Coast SDS conference that they were bodily removed from the gathering" (Nolan 1971, 25). During the two hours of protest speeches outside the July 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami, the constant Krishna din from chanting was sufficiently loud that "one demonstrator remarked, 'Those dudes are enough to stifle a revolution' " (Delaney 1972). Similarly, members of the COG disrupted a speech by Jerry Rubin at the University of California, Santa Barbara, by pounding their wooden rods on the ground and chanting "Woe, woe, woe" (Enroth, Ericson, and Peters 1972, 34; see Wangerin 1993, 22-23). Perhaps the chant was an appropriate epithet for the dying Movement.

Notes 6. For another statement of this claim, see the interviewer's question to Maharaj Ji in J. Wood 1973, 48.

7. See e.g. Downton 1979, 31-32; Kent 1988, 104, 104n. 2; Rossman 1979, 22; Snell 1974, 21. It seems likely that most of the conversions of former activists and radicals took place before 1975, at which time a major upheaval occurred in the DLM that led to the recruitment of a new type of convert. After 1975, "one had to accept Guru Maharaj Ji as a personal savior in order to become a member," and the people who were able to do so tended to have "been very religious in their pre adolescent years" (Derks and van der Lans 1983, 305).

8. For Davis's mention of meeting another former activist turned DLM convert prior to his own conversion, see also "Serendipity of Peace" 1973, 3. Elsewhere Davis said about his Indian ashram trip that "I was expecting a secluded mon[a]stery. When I got there, to my shock, there were 50 or 60 westerners there. I found people who had been arrested at May Day, Chicago, one woman from a Women's collective in New York, another guy from a Marxist Leninist study group in Buffalo. I never felt so comfortable with a group of people in my life. I thought it was like an early SDS convention in the Himalayas" (T. Wood 1973b). According to Allen Ginsberg, Davis had been doing Haven meditation (learned from friends of Gary Snyder) for several months prior to his conversion ("Rennie Davis" 1973).

9. On Donner's activities with the Beaver 55, see Cameron 1973, 146-53; Kelley 1973b, 54; Collier 1978, 179; "Michael Donner" 1976, 1. His first prison term of fourteen months for a related conviction appears to have taken place mostly during 1969, prior to his conversion. On the Beaver 55 in general, see Zaroulis and Sullivan 1984, 288. An undated, unattributed statement about the Beaver 55's actions against draft board records in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis and against Dow Chemical Company (because of its manufacture of the chemical agent napalm, a jelly that burned off skin) appears in Bloom and Breines 1995, 252.

14. Also worth mentioning is that customs agents detained Maharaj Ji at the New Delhi airport in 1972, and they discovered that he was carrying "approximately $100,000 in money, watches and jewels, including diamond rings and a pearl necklace" (Morris 1972).

15. As another example of the guru's "newspeak," I also should note that a 1970 discourse that the twelve year old Maharaj Ji allegedly gave about his bringing peace to the world came to be known among his followers as the "Peace Bomb" ("History" 1973, 12). For other examples of critics equating the crowd behavior of premies with Nazism, see Van Ness 1973.

16. The "red book" is a reference to the red covered Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung, which was distributed widely in China and elsewhere during the Cultural Revolution. For an additional criticism of ashram life, see Schafer 1973.

17. For another example of a former premie who had become scared by group members' growing social isolation and blind devotion, see Manoff 1973.

23. Apparently the debate did take place, given that a picture of Davis and Krassner sitting beside a moderator (reporter Ken Kelley of the Berkeley Barb) appears in the photo section of Krassner's Confesdons. Always irreverent, Krassner played with Maharaj Ji's title as "The Perfect Master" and told Davis that his guru was "the Perfect Masturbator." Davis did not respond to the provocation.

24. The Maharishi's 1968 tour with the Beach Boys was disastrous, with the fans "completely uninterested in hearing the Maharishi." Ticket sales were so low that "the tour was cancelled halfway through, at a loss approaching half a million dollars" (Gaines 1986, 197).

25. For an additional example of Davis (this time in either New Jersey or New York) being hassled by leftists who turned his talk into "a three ring circus of verbal confrontation," see Jorgensen 1973, 6.

Khalsa

Divine Light Mission, on the other hand, which has its roots in Hinduism, does not draw on a religion which has traditionally encouraged material growth. Hindu saints and sages usually renounced the world called Maya, the illusion, and led ascetic lives free from worldly entanglements. Guru Maharaj Ji's teachings concerning material growth are in fact quite simple. What is of prime importance to a devotee of Guru Maharaj Ji is receiving knowledge (the personal initiation given by the Guru or by his initiators in which it is believed that God is revealed). Everything else in the devotee's life will take care of itself if the experience and practice of knowledge are the primary concerns in one's life. In the words of Denver's DLM director, "He (Guru Maharaj Ji) doesn't give any teachings about the material life. He is not a marriage counselor, dietitian, (or business advisor). He is not here to give that kind of attention. Basically have the experience he has to offer and when you become rooted in that experience it (questions about material life) will become known unto you." Thus we find no encouragement from the leadership or from the group itself to pursue material goals. Material goals are not seen as evil or wrong and conceivably a devotee can be very rich and still practice knowledge. However, the material world is generally seen, by the devotees of Guru Maharaj Ji, as a distraction to spiritual growth and an area in which one must only necessarily be involved, ideally minimally, but only to meet the basic requirements of life.

The resource mobilization approach is also useful in analyzing why Divine Light Mission rejected the turn to worldly success. DLM was faced with the same changing social conditions that faced 3HO Foundation and Vajradhatu. Guru Maharaj Ji, however, decided to keep DLM a small movement without a complex organizational structure. The decision was made for the following practical reasons of group survival: 1) the financial crunch was critical and DLM had to cut back; 2) traditional Hinduism has never supported worldly success as religiously significant and the decision was consistent with Guru Maharaj Ji's teachings: and 3) group dependency on the charismatic leader remains firmer in a smaller group. Thus DLM, like 3HO Foundation and Vajradhatu, underwent changes in its structures and practices that were initiated by the charismatic leader, that promoted group survival, and that were consistent with its ideology.

Lans and Derks 1986

Premies versus sannyasins by Jan van der Lans and Frans Derks in Update X 2 June 1986

See http://www.dci.dk/en/?article=599

Levine, Saul V.

...true believership is in by far the majority of instances a temporary phenomenon. It is followed...by a stage I call "seeds of doubt." This is typified by the member seemingly suddenly being aware of two major issues which had for many months (usually) or year been buried. The first is the apparent inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the group itself: for example, living at subsistence level in the Divine Light Mission while the Maharaj Ji lived in ostentatious opulence. p.105

• Levine, Saul V. "Life in the Cults" in Galanter, Mark, Cults and new religious movements: a report of the committee on psychiatry and religion of the American Psychiatric Association (1989), ISBN 0-89042-212-5

Lewis

TBD

Melton - Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America

Melton J. Gordon Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New York/London: Garland, 1986 (revised edition), ISBN 0-8240-9036-5, pp. 141-145

(note: misspelling of the names of Mishler and Durga were made by the author(s))

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D. DIVINE LIGHT MISSION

The arrival in the United States in 1971 of a 13 year old religious leader from India was met with some ridicule but, more importantly, an extraordinary amount of interest from young adults who were willing to seriously examine his claims of being able to impart direct knowledge of God. From that initial support, Guru Maharaj Ji was able to establish a flourishing American branch of the Divine Light Mission.

Founders and Early History

The Divine Light mission was founded by Shri Hans Maharaj Ji (d. 1966), the father of Maharaj Ji. Early in life he encountered Sarupanand Ji, a guru of the Sant Mat tradition by whom he was initiated. Though Sarupanand Ji had told his disciples to follow Hans Maharaj Ji, after the guru’s death another disciple, Varaganand, claimed the succession and took control of the guru’s property. Hans Maharaj Ji began to spread the teaching independently in Sind and Lahore, and in 1930 he established an informal mission in Delhi. His following grew steadily. In 1950, shortly after Indian independence had been declared, he commissioned the first mahatmas, followers who had the ability to initiate and who devoted themselves full time to the work of propagating the teachings of Shri Hans Maharaj Ji. He also began a monthly magazine, Hansadesh. By 1960 followers could be found across northern India from Bombay to Calcutta, and the need to organize them more formally led to the founding of the Divine Light Mission (Divya Sandesh Parishad).

just six years after the founding of the Mission, Shri Hans Maharaj Ji was succeeded by his youngest son, Prem Pat Singh Rawat (b. 1957), who was but eight when he was recognized as the new Perfect Master and assumed the title, Maharaj Ji. Maharaj Ji had been recognized as spiritually adept, even within the circle of the Holy Family, as Shri Hans Maharaj Ji’s family was called. He had been initiated (i.e., given knowledge) at the age of six and soon afterward gave his first satsang (spiritual discourse). After his father’s death he heard a voice commissioning him as the one to take the knowledge to the world. He assumed the role of Perfect Master at his father’s funeral by telling the disciples who had gathered, “Dear Children of God, why are you weeping? Haven’t you learned the lesson that your Master taught you? The Perfect Master never dies. Maharaj Ji is here, amongst you now. Recognize Him, obey Him and worship Him.” Though officially the autocratic leader of the Mission, because of Maharaj Ji’s age, authority was shared by the whole family.

During the 1960s Americans in India searching for spiritual guidance discovered the Mission and a few became initiates (i.e., “premies,” or “lovers of God”). They invited Maharaj Ji to the United States. In 1970 Maharaj Ji announced his plans to carry the knowledge throughout the world and the following year, against his mother’s wishes, made his first visit to the West. A large crowd came to Colorado the next year to hear him give his first set of discourses in America. Many were initiated and became the core of the Mission in the United States. Headquarters were established in Denver, and by the end of 1973, tens of thousands had been initiated, and several hundred centers as well as over twenty ashrams, which housed approximately 500 of the most dedicated premies, had emerged. The headquarters staff expanded to 125, and social service facilities, such as a medical clinic in New York City, were opened. Two periodicals, And It Is Divine, a magazine, and Divine Times, a tabloid, were begun. Enthusiasm ran high.

After a spectacular beginning in North America, the Mission suffered a major setback in November 1973 It rented the Houston Astrodome for “Millennium 73,” an event celebrating the birthday of Maharaj Ji’s father and designed to announce the beginning of a thousand years of peace and prosperity. The event failed; attendance was miniscule. The Mission was left with a $600,000 debt which required it to cut its staff and programs.

Millennium 73 was but the first of a series of events which gradually led the Mission to withdraw from the public scene. It was staged just as the anti cult movement reached national proportions and turned its attention upon the Mission. Several deprogrammed ex members became vocal critics of the Mission. Through his Executive Secretary, Maharaj Ji announced that he was replacing the predominantly Indian image with a Western one. Among other changes, he began to wear business suits instead of his all white Indian attire. Many of the ashrams were discontinued.

To the problems caused by the debt and the attack of anticultists were added internal problems within Maharaj Ji’s family. In December 1973, when Maharaj Ji turned 16, he took administrative control of the Mission’s separate American corporation. Then in May 1974, he married his 24 year old secretary, Marolyn Johnson, and declared her to be the incarnation of the goddess Dulga usually pictured with ten arms and astride a tiger. Premies purchased an estate in Malibu into which the couple moved. Mataji, Maharaj Ji’s mother, disapproved of the marriage and the life style of the now successful guru. Relations within the Holy Family were strained considerably. Accusing her son of breaking his spiritual disciplines, Mataji took control of the Mission in India and replaced him with his eldest brother. In 1975 Maharaj Ji returned to India and took his family to court. In a court decreed settlement, he received control of the movement everywhere except in India, where his brother was recognized as its head. Publicity about the marriage and the subsequent family quarrels caused many Western followers to leave the Mission, though a large membership remained.

By the late 1970s the Mission in the United States had almost disappeared from public view. Maharaj Ji continues to travel the globe speaking to premies, and the Mission, while growing little in the United States, has expanded significantly in Southern Asia, the South Pacific and South America.

Beliefs and Practices

The Divine Light Mission is derived from Sant Mat (literally, the way of the saints), a variation of the Sikh religion which draws significant elements from Hinduism. It is based upon a succession of spiritual masters generally believed to begin with Tulsi Sahib, an early nineteenth century guru who lived at Hathrash, Uttar Pradesh. It is believed that the person mentioned as Sarupanand Ji in Mission literature is in fact Sawan Singh, a prominent Sant Mat guru. In any case Hans Maharaj Ji claimed a Sant Mat succession which he passed to Maharaj Ji. Maharaj Ji, as do many of the other Sant Mat leaders, claims to be a Perfect Master, an embodiment of God on earth, a fitting object of worship and veneration.

The Mission has as one of its stated goals the instruction of the world in “the technique of utilizing the universal primordial Force, that is, the Holy Name (Word) which is the same as the Divine Light and which pervades all human beings thus bringing to the fore the eternal principle of unity in diversity.” In the Sant Mat tradition this practice is called surat shabd yoga, the practice of uniting the human spirit with the universal divine sound current. The particular methods of accomplishing that union vary from group to group and are one reason for their separation. Within the Divine Light Mission, initiation into the yoga is by a process known as giving knowledge. Though premies were instructed not to talk about their initiation outside of the Mission, details of the process were soon revealed by ex members.

At initiation, a mahatma, the personal representative of Maharaj Ji, introduces new members to four yogic techniques, all of which are quite common within Sant Mat circles, although equally unknown to the average person, even to the average Indian. These four techniques reveal the means of experiencing the divine light, sound, word, and nectar. To experience the divine light, one places the knuckles on the eyeballs, a process which produces flashes of light inside the head (and also pinches the optic nerve). To discover the divine sound or music of the spheres, one plugs the ears with the fingers and concentrates only on internal sounds. The third technique involves concentration upon the sound of one’s own breathing. Finally, to taste the nectar, the tongue is curled backward against the roof of the mouth and left there for a period of time. Once learned, these techniques are practiced daily. Frequently, meditation is done under a blanket, both to block outside disturbances and to conceal the techniques.

Unlike many Sant Mat groups, the Divine Light Mission has had a social program from its beginning. Shri Hans Maharaj Ji called for a balance between temporal and spiritual concerns, and the Mission's stated goals include the promotion of human unity, world peace, improved education for all (especially the poor), and relief from the distress caused by ill health and natural calamities. The Mission made provision for the establishment of hospitals, maternity homes, and residences. This emphasis upon social programs was transferred to the United States.

Three holiday festivals which members are expected to attend are held annually. The Holi festival is in March or April. The Guru Puja (Maharaj Ji's birthday) is in July. Hans Jayanti (Hans Maharaj Ji's birthday) is in November.

Current Status

Since 1974, the Divine Light Mission has increasingly kept a low profile and at present is virtually invisible in the United States. In 1979 the Denver headquarters quietly closed, and both it and Maharaj Ji moved to Miami Beach, Florida. From there, two periodicals are currently published, Divine Times and Elan Vital.

In 1980, the Mission reported 10,000 to 12,000 active members in the United States. The Mission is headed by Maharaj Ji, its Spiritual Leader and the Board of Directors which supervises the 23 branches. Ministers (mahatmas) lead the Mission centers around the world. Many of them travel from center to center to give initiation and satsang (spiritual discourses). Members are required to participate in meditation daily and attend satsang each evening.

Controversy

During the first years of the Divine Light Mission in the United States, both it and Maharaj Ji were constantly involved in controversy. The teachings of the Mission, particularly the public discourses of Maharaj Ji, were condemned as lacking in substance. Maharaj Ji, who frequently acted like the teenager that he was in public, was seen as immature and hence unfit to be a religious leader. At one point, a pie was thrown in his face (which led angry followers to assault the perpetrator). Ex members attacked the group with standard anti cult charges of brainwashing and mind control.

However, as the group withdrew from the public eye, little controversy followed it except for the accusations of Robert Mishner [sic] the former president of the Mission, who left in 1977. Mishner complained that the ideals of the group had become impossible to fulfill and that money was increasingly diverted to Maharaj Ji's personal use. Mishner's charges, made just after the deaths at Jonestown, Guyana, [1978] found little support and have not affected the progress of the Mission.

References

• Shri Hans Ji Maharaj (Delhi: Divine Light Mission, n.d.).
• Guru Maharaj Ji,
  • Reflections on an Indian Sunrise (Divine Light Mission, 1972). ,
  • The Living Master (Denver: Divine Light Mission, 1978).
  • Light Reading (Miami Beach, FL: Divine Light Mission, 1980).
  • Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji? (New York: Bantam Books, 1973).
• James V. Downton, Jr., Sacred journeys (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979)
• Maeve Price, "The Divine Light Mission as a Social Organization," Sociological Review 27, 2 (May 1979), 279 96.

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Comments

I think that Melton is not the author, because he only wrote the preface. Individual entries were in many cases not written by Partridge. Who was the author of this entry? Andries 10:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Melton and Patridge are listed as Eds. (editors) so it is unlikely one of them wrote it. I will need to check the book next time I go to the library. I had this on my files for a while. ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 16:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Amazon.com cannot be trusted, as can be seen also at talk:Lord of the Universe (documentary). I saw the lousy book (the entry on SSB contained a mistake in every sentence) and I think that Melton only wrote the preface. Andries 23:53, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Who cares if it is Melton or Patridge, it's all there in black and white.Momento 09:37, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Messer 1976

Messer, Jeanne. "Guru Maharaj Ji and the Divine Light Mission" in The New Religious Consciousness by Charles Y. Glock and Robert N. Bellah, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, ISBN 0-52003-472-4, pp. 52-72.

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WHO IS GURU MAHARAJ JI?

Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji? is the title of a book and a popular topic of conversation for thousands of Americans, most of whom either have or intend to have a firm opinion. Guru Maharaj Ji is most easily described as a boy guru, successor to his father's disciples, who was persuaded to bring his movement to the West by a handful of Western devotees who had discovered him in India. Since August 9, 1971, more than eighty thousand Americans have become his devotees. East and West, the movement itself is called the Divine Light Mission.

Maharaj Ji's masterhood at the age of eight (when his father died) seems no less presumptuous to the average Indian than it does to the average Westerner. We have at least the example of Christ preaching in the synagogues at the age of twelve to inhibit spontaneous dismissal of his claims. But we share the habit of expecting holy men to have renounced material pleasures-witness what we pay our preachers-and to be aged and erudite. This leader of some five million devotees is really a child and a lover of machine-age toys: cars, airplanes, stereos, rock band equipment, even computers, which fascinate him.

What he teaches, however, is not new. I first saw him when he was thirteen, sitting in a white satin-covered chair, surrounded by roses and prostrating devotees, in a Unitarian church in San Francisco. On the walls of the sanctuary were inscribed the verses "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you" and "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And Maharaj Ji's short speech was a succinct version of the Gospels. "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. And I can reveal it to you." That was sum and substance, followed by an invitation to see him the following day if one was interested -a possibility to which I did not admit for months afterward. He only said of other religions that he had come not to start a new church but to make perfect Christians, Buddhists, or Moslems. He denied that he himself was perfect, asserting only that he could show one perfection. "If you want to learn about mathematics, you go to a mathematics master. If you want to learn about perfection, you go to a Perfect Master." And he urged anyone who felt he had a way to know God to pursue that way and to keep him in reserve. "If you cannot find God any other way, then come to me." A substantial percentage of his devotees are, in fact, people who have seriously sought God or God realization on other paths, whether as devout Christians or Jews or as followers of other Eastern teachers.

KNOWLEDGE VERSUS BELIEF

Suppose that modern "rational" man's greatest presumption-and greatest error-has been to treat the scriptures of the world's major religions as records of primitive mythologies. In rejecting the premise that we live in a teleological universe, many have given themselves no "rational" alternative but to reject the underpinnings of history's great religions.\n

What Guru Maharj Ji's devotees claim to have is a direct experience of that teleological center, the force that operates the cosmos. Rennie Davis, one of the Chicago Seven defendants and now a devotee of Maharaj Ji, told his fellow radicals in Berkeley that "God is that energy which physicists tell us cannot be created and cannot be destroyed. What the physicists don't tell us is that that energy is conscious."

Guru Maharaj Ji's claim is that God is that entity which unifies the cosmos, and that one can know God directly - a superb promise to make to a rationalist who cannot meet the requirements of faith or conviction. His teaching consists simply of what he calls "giving knowledge," not of any extensive set of moral precepts. Unlike most Eastern religious teachers, he generally refuses to give concrete instructions regarding what one should eat, how one should make a living, or what one's disciplehood should involve. All of truth is in "the knowledge."

"The knowledge" is really two different experiences, neither of which can be empirically demonstrated to involve Guru Maharaj Ji. Those who agree to become his devotees are permitted to "receive knowledge." This first experience of the knowledge consists of four events which take place in a "knowledge session" conducted by a mahatma (at this writing, all but one of Guru Maharaj Ji's some two thousand mahatmas are from India or Tibet) with a group of fifteen to twenty-five initiates.

1. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be filled with light" (Jesus of Nazareth, Matt. 6:22). Indians of many sects believe this to be a literal truth, that one can see inward with what is called the "third eye" and perceive God in the form of light within the self. Guru Maharaj Ji's devotees are shown individually an intense light within themselves, and then are shown how to meditate on that light independently. This light is described in all scriptures and in many accounts of ecstatic drug experiences, but few people see it with any frequency or predictability. After a knowledge session, devotees report seeing that light regularly in meditation, and with increasing intensity over time. At its most intense, it is brilliant white light; it can also be a many-hued light show. Many devotees also report seeing images or pictures in the light.

2. The "music of the spheres" or "sound of sounds" appears in all scriptures. Maharaj Ji's devotees are made aware of its presence and are shown how to listen for it in their private meditations. The sounds devotees report hearing range from water sounds-similar to, but richer and more varied than, those heard in a seashell or conch-to crickets in the grass on a summer night to stringed instruments and choirs.

3. Devotees are told of a nectar flowing in the body which they can taste, and they are instructed to meditate by tasting that nectar at all possible times. The nectar has been described as tasting like a combination of butter and honey.

4. Devotees are made aware of an internal vibration and are told to meditate on it at all times, waking or sleeping. This is said to be the Word or Name of God, as in the verse "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).

What occurs in a knowledge session beyond these four events is not clear even to an initiate. The existence of light, music, nectar, and the vibration is no secret to either Eastern teachers or scriptural scholars. In the East, however, disciples are usually taught that these experiences will occur, with the grace of God, after many years of patient meditation, devotion, and service to God. In the West, they are generally treated as metaphor. Yet they occur unmistakably in the knowledge session and thereafter (but with less intensity) for Maharaj Ji's devotees. What creates the intensity in that session is unclear, but there is no obvious autosuggestion or other accompanying ritual or activity to account for it. A few weeks after such a session, most new devotees report the discovery from their own meditation that the experience is addictive, that is, one thirsts for more of it, and that they cannot create that experience with the same intensity for themselves. The few who have tried have apparently failed to reveal anything to nondevotees beyond the form of the meditation technique.

Devotees are also asked to attend Sat Sang regularly-informal and leaderless discussions among devotees of their experiences-and to do "service" for Guru Maharaj Ji. The nature of such service is unspecified. It is clear that it includes letting others know that the knowledge is available; but one would do that, if satisfied, without instruction. Otherwise it appears at first to be a matter of choice. One might arrange speaking tours for mahatmas-disciples who are authorized to conduct knowledge sessions-or chat in coffee shops with strangers or simply tell one's friends.

"This knowledge," says Guru Maharaj Ji, "is not the Knowledge. The Knowledge is in the meditation." That tells new initiates very little and the uninitiated less. But devotees report a remarkable transformation of consciousness in a very short period of time. I have tried below to describe that transformation fairly and to avoid any generalization that does not apply to all practicing devotees, but the sequence of events should not be taken as fixed. I was a thoroughgoing atheist at the time of initiation and was looking for a tranquilizer, not God. But for the many who require no convincing, that stage in the transformation is experienced simply as confirmation, not as transformation. There may be other similar variations from devotee to devotee.

The first obvious 'change is the discovery that meditation is a source of energy - a discovery common among those engaged in many forms of meditation. Devotees are simply less fatigued, less easily disoriented when they meditate regularly, and they become rapidly dependent on the meditation as a source of rest, energy, and personal integration. Fifteen minutes of meditation - even with poor concentration - is a healthy substitute for an afternoon nap and is often more restful psychologically than sleep.

The second change is an increasing awareness of what Rennie Davis calls "that remarkable series of coincidences on which Divine Light Mission runs." It is the beginning of an awareness of cause and effect as different from what they once seemed to be. One begins to feel that events in one's life are being arranged for the sole purpose of getting one's attention - as if the external and internal worlds were working together without one's conscious cooperation. One devotee reports feeling "directed" to pick up hitchhikers, who turn out to be devotees. Another devotee's car window exploded inside the car door and rained glass all over her, with no injuries and no apparent cause, and she experienced the event as a demand that she meditate. Most devotees are not consciously looking for signs; they feel confronted by signs requesting their cooperation. For some, these experiences begin shortly before they actually receive the knowledge, though after they began to consider it.

What follows, ranging in time from six weeks to a year, is an increasing awareness that reality is not quite the way it looks and that it is arranged to look the way it does for the one who sees it. With this is a growing and unshakable conviction that one is accompanied, tended, loved, and taught by God, and that the God within is remarkably like the child guru: happy, playful, insistent, unpredictable, loving, and perfectly benevolent.

Guru Maharaj Ji tells his devotees that "everything this Knowledge touches becomes perfect," and devotees report that things do. Their marriages, their work, their finances, their relations with family and peers - all improve in a manner conspicuous to everyone around them. Devotees become lighthearted and lose much of their tendency to depression or despondency. Many report a change in their relation to right and wrong. A fixed moral code becomes a desire to respond to the internal cues without reference to any existing standard. With that change, devotees indicate that guilt disappears; that is, there is no pool of guilt that is evoked by wrongdoing. One regrets a lack of "responsibility" in its generic sense, but the self-hatred associated with shame is lacking. One begins to feel and act toward one's self and others as one experiences God acting within the self: playful, loving, and benevolent.

What comes out of this whole area of changing consciousness is an extraordinary dialogue among devotees. Miracle stories-from pure trivia to the really remarkable-are exchanged by the hundreds and with delight and laughter. Everyone is overcome by the irony that seems to fill their lives: nothing they ever thought was true. This leads inevitably to much talk about the nature of thought and of the mind.

THE MIND, IN THE EAST AND IN THE KNOWLEDGE

Westerners approaching Eastern teachers from any school are confronted with constant reiteration that the mind is the barrier to enlightenment, whether enlightenment is described as complete nothingness or as perfect bliss or as knowledge of God. Needless to say, that truth could not be accessible to the mind. Westerners are generally accustomed to identifying themselves with the boundaries of their bodies, the thoughts in their minds, and with their emotions, such as depression or ecstasy; to be told that their identity is essentially different is to be informed of nothing. Maharaj Ji's devotees claim, however, that it is possible to experience that fact, whether or not the mind is willing to acquiesce. There is no way-functionally at least-to bypass the premises of rationalism except to introduce experience where the mind says experience is not possible-that is, to provide incontrovertible evidence to which the mind has no alternative but to acquiesce. To assert that the mind cannot comprehend God is not to assert that the man cannot, if one is accustomed to that distinction; but many of us are not so accustomed, and have long asserted that God is an entity in whom one believes, an entity, that is, beyond experience.

I raise this here as a purely pragmatic question, not as one involving philosophical distinctions. If it is true that one can know God, can engage in dialogue with God, then the assumptions on which Westerners commonly lead their lives are called into question. In describing the experiences of Guru Maharj Ji's devotees below, I am necessarily limited to description, from the same root as the word scripture, and can transmit none of the experience itself. But the question of what impact this movement might have on Western social order rests entirely on the nature of the experience and the consequences of the experience, and not on the nature of any beliefs.

There are, of course, other religious sects in the West that stress experience as well as belief, and that are probably seeking and perhaps finding the same experience that Maharaj Ji's devotees report. Nevertheless, the larger Christian denominations stress belief, not experience, and morality, not obedience to God in the direct sense of responding to commands. Prayer, for instance, is a one-way conversation, which God is assumed to hear and to answer; but it is not common for Westerners to report hearing God's response. Most Westerners point to the beauty of nature or of infants to demonstrate God's love; it is rarer for them to report feeling loved, feeling fathered with all that that implies, feeling guided or directed in the moment rather than in the abstract. And most base what we call "conscientious" behavior on fixed moral precepts-the Ten Commandments, perhaps, or the Golden Rule, or local cultural norms. There exists a set of rules about right behavior to which one can refer.

For Maharaj Ji's devotees, fixed referents begin to dissolve as they practice meditation. New initiates are caught up in the same dogmatic and philosophical questions that most of us are. "Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?" is answered in terms of new cosmologies designed to fit this young man into the universe, into history, and into the major religions as well as one's own experience and philosophy. Common answers from new initiates, for example, are that Guru Maharaj Ji is Christ, that Christ has been on the earth many times, as Jesus, as Buddha, as Mohammed, as Krishna, or that Christ has always been on the earth (this inferred from Guru Maharaj Ji's assertion that there is always a Perfect Master on the earth). Others assert that he is God himself, but still others that he is simply a guru, of whom there are many, with remarkable power. All devotees try to deal with the fact that Maharaj Ji comes from India, and they absorb great quantities of what they understand to be Hindu dogma, though Maharaj Ji gives little suggestion of being Hindu in religion.

New devotees spend hours trying to "figure out" the knowledge. It is obvious that the four objects of meditation block the sensory apparatus of the body. That is, the internal light is experienced as light seen with the eyes, even though the eyes are designed to pick up external images only, and the blind perceive only the internal light. Sound, which seems to be perceived with the ears, is heard also by the deaf. The nectar occupies taste and smell; the vibration, touch or feeling. Devotees amuse themselves by discussing this novel approach to undermining "illusion" as recorded by external senses, and by otherwise making up conceptual frameworks or reality structures into which they can fit this new activity.

All theories begin to dissolve in short order, however, as they are replaced by an awareness that simply bypasses language and the mind. It is not that one cannot think any more; it is just that one cannot think of any way to articulate the experience accurately or to explain it. God is not experienced as "energy"; one mahatma suggests that "energy" is simply a twentieth-century handle for the subject-that-cannot-be-discussed, and that is how it begins to seem. None of the experience gives one a sense that Maharaj Ji is a series of manifestations of Christ. One's notions of right and wrong are neither confirmed nor undermined by the experience; they are simply replaced by a sense that one is being instructed constantly, and the notion of an unchanging code of behavior fades into the background. The only fixed referent becomes the meditation itself. If one is not sure what to do next, one is probably not meditating on the Holy Name, the vibration; and uncertainty becomes a reminder to meditate, not a reality of any duration. The devotee resumes meditating, and his next move becomes "obvious," that is, he feels inclined to do thus and so with no admixture from any other inclination.

Although what devotees feel compelled to do looks increasingly like what the New Testament suggests is right behavior, the behavior feels spontaneous or responsive, not righteous. Maharaj Ji's devotees report, for instance, feeling as if they were overflowing with love, as if there were not enough love objects available when they are meditating. Brotherly love then becomes an experience, not a righteous idea. Devotees also report that giving Sat Sang (that is, talking to others about one's experience) and listening to Sat Sang (listening to others talk about their experience) become irresistibly delightful, a way to "get high," in contemporary parlance. Acts of service become extraordinarily rewarding, but the reward is not to the ego or a sense of right action; it is simply the reward of happiness. When practicing devotees leave off meditating or service for whatever reasons, happiness is displaced by despair or depression accompanied by a strong desire to "get happy" again.

The happiness devotees report bears no resemblance to the amiability of the oblivious. Devotees, though decreasingly inclined to be anxious about the future and less able to remember an unhappy past clearly, are prey to all the difficulties of a day-to-day existence, and days go up and down as emotions do. It is the foundation of one's self-experience that is altered; where there was chaos or an abyss there is a good feeling toward the self and toward the world, which is unaffected by day-to-day ups and downs, a kind of indestructible happiness that is not easily contaminated by difficulty or sorrow.

A tale passed along by devotees seems to epitomize their experience of their minds after some months of meditation. The story is a once-upon-a-time tale, in which a man travels through most of his life with a lizard on his shoulder, whose opinion he respects above all else. For years he goes where the lizard suggests and shifts course with the lizard's whims. If they go to the city, the lizard acquires a quick dislike of cities and demands that they go to the country; if they go to the country, the lizard becomes bored.

One day the lizard tells the man that he's heard of a great train ride one can take to a place called Heaven, a perfect place. "Let's catch that train," says the lizard, "I'm tired of this place." The man agrees, as is his habit. As they begin to board the train, the conductor stops them. "No lizards allowed on this train," he says; "you'll have to leave that lizard behind if you want to come." The man steps off the train unhappily and the lizard protests. "Hide me in your breast pocket," hisses the lizard; "I want to take this train." So the man hides the lizard and boards the train. When the train is well under way, and the man is thoroughly and happily engrossed by the scenery, the lizard slips out of his pocket and onto his shoulder. "This isn't so great," complains the lizard. "Is this all you've seen so far?" "I like it," says the man firmly. "Well, I don't," frets the lizard. "Let's get off at the next stop." They are still arguing when the conductor pops up and spots the lizard on the man's shoulder. "We don't allow lizards on this train," he reminds the man. "Either get rid of that thing or get off the train." The lizard suggests they get off, happy that the confrontation suits his purpose; but the man hesitates, then looks defeated and unable to reject the companion to which he is so habituated. He looks despairingly at the conductor, who tears the lizard from his shoulder and flings it from the train. The lizard's back breaks and he turns into a beautiful white stallion. The conductor places the man on the stallion and gives it a hit on the rear, and the man rides off to Heaven on its back.

Not too subtly, the lizard is the mind, the train is Maharaj Ji's knowledge, and the conductor is Maharaj Ji. Devotees love this tale, particularly the part where the man tries to hide the lizard and take it with him on the ride. The joke is on themselves, since they have certainly not broken any lizard backs yet; and they love it, presumably because they can at least dimly comprehend the distinction between the mind and the man, a liberating comprehension once one begins to enjoy it. The suggestion that the mind should serve the man, like a stallion, and not the reverse, has also become comprehensible to practicing devotees, most of whom have begun to understand their goal in similar terms. All are convinced, because they experience it intermittently, that it is possible to become a perfect instrument of God, a perfect servant, if one can only shut the lizard up long enough to hear the Father calling. Response to the Father, they insist, is natural and spontaneous, if one hears his voice over the static in the mind. Meditation, then, becomes at minimum a technique for quieting the mind so that one can hear the truth from its Creator and then obey. In hearing and obeying is the "bliss" of which the scriptures speak, but which they cannot transmit, because words transmit information about experience, not the experience itself.

"MANIFESTING" THE KNOWLEDGE

What happens to any lone individual consciousness is, of course, of concern only to the immediate beneficiary or to someone who observes the outward manifestations and is attracted to them or interested in their origins. If this particular guru and his meditation techniques make a lot of people privately content, yet affect their behavior not at all, it is of little interest to anyone else and of no interest to social scientists.

It is what is manifest, therefore, that is of concern here. I choose that word deliberately because it is also part of the argot of devotees. Devotees maintain that just as one can know God, rather than simply believe in him, one can also manifest his activity in one's self and one's relationship to him in one's behavior. That is, it is the activities of Maharaj Ji and his devotees that will bring others to the movement, not a set of convincing precepts or conceptual schema. That does not mean that enthusiastic devotees do not go around trying to present convincing arguments for conversion, for they do. It does mean that they consider those arguments a poor substitute for the reality of manifest God realization.

What is first visible to others about a devotee is undoubtedly his increasing happiness, manifested as amiability, greater flexibility in interaction, evenness of temper, and an ability to hear the truth about himself and to tell the truth about what he himself sees. (Many devotees, especially those who are deeply involved in organizational activity from the beginning, become aggressively dogmatic during the first months of meditation, which certainly covers and slows these changes.) That is, happiness is linked closely to a sense of security which permits devotees to be open where they were previously vulnerable and therefore closed. Most agree that in their first few months of meditation they feel progressively better, but only half consciously, until they begin to experience what they describe as an overflowing of good feeling and joy, a sense that the source of this good feeling is limitless. The more convinced they become that there is no limit to this feeling, the less vulnerable they feel, and the more open to further personal changes they become.

There follows an increasing willingness to rejoin the mainstream of society, in whatever area they felt alienated or separated. Many keep their distance from both Guru Maharaj Ji and Divine Light Mission for months, until they feel secure enough to approach more closely the question of where their new experiences originate and to deal with social pressures from fellow devotees which are concentrated in the person of the Mission itself. At this point it becomes difficult to distinguish changes stemming from the knowledge in its pure sense from changes linked to an increasing group consciousness. Devotees are told from the beginning that Sat Sang and service are as necessary as the meditation to the realization of the knowledge. At this juncture all three activities begin to overlap, and in this context one is able to observe the activities of this burgeoning religious movement as a social movement with potential implications for the rest of the social order. This, then, is where one begins to look at "manifestations of the knowledge" on the group level.

I once watched a reporter interview a mahatma and devotees at the San Francisco Divine Light Mission ashram; the reporter set out to identify significant characteristics of the group of about two hundred persons. Using only a show of hands, he concluded that every age group was represented, as well as every occupational and education group. This writer's impression was that the group was predominantly young (twenty to thirty years) and middle class in origin, though a surprising number of older adults were present.

Most devotees, whatever their background, are employed full time, have short hair and own suits if they are male, and generally present a conventional face to the world. They do this deliberately and self-consciously to avoid alienating the world at large from Guru Maharaj Ji for the sake of some earlier social identity of their own. There are young devotees whose parents became interested in the knowledge because "Anybody who can get that kid to cut his hair can't be all bad." But having made their physical appearance uninteresting, they make more significant the substance of their organizational activity, and that is precisely their aim.

DIVINE LIGHT MISSION

Divine Light Mission is a worldwide organization dedicated to the propagation of Guru Maharaj Ji's knowledge. It operates as a cluster of organizations engaged in innumerable activities; these are tied together financially (sometimes) and by their general aim of "service to Maharaj Ji" (always). There is nothing tidy or systematic about the operations of the Mission as a whole, and at present (1974) it is difficult to divide it into meaningful sectors even for discussion purposes.

Divine Light Mission (DLM) maintains all ashrams (coeducational households of devotees who have devoted all their time and possessions to service) and their activities: promotion of public programs; hosting mahatmas, members of Maharaj Ji's family, or Maharaj Ji; maintenance of a center devoted to the giving of knowledge, meditation, and Sat Sang. The Mission also coordinates the itineraries of mahatmas and Maharaj Ji and his family and the periodic national or international gatherings of devotees.

International Activity

Since all countries share Maharaj Ji, those few mahatmas he has permitted to leave India, and Maharaj Ji's family, there is continuous cooperation with respect to itineraries (though this is one area dominated by Maharaj Ji's personal decisions), travel and housing arrangements, and presentation of programs. Since 1971, there has been a festival each year to which all devotees were invited, which required months of cooperation in the organization of charter flights, housing, and finances. In 1972, for instance, American devotees chartered six 747s to fly to India, and the price per seat was set so that South American devotees could fly from New York to India free of charge. Other countries made similar arrangements to accommodate the poor. Millenium '73, to which devotees throughout the world were invited, was held in November 1973 at the Houston Astrodome. Seven international flights flew devotees to Houston. Divine Light Mission International paid for many of the flights.

Otherwise, Divine Light Mission is separately incorporated and operates independently from country to country. All ties between countries are cooperative rather than formal.

National Activity

The Divine Light Mission's national headquarters in the United States are in Denver, Colorado-the fiscal center for the country and the bureaucratic hub of all Mission activity. All ashram residents are assigned to their residences by Denver. Anyone needing funds applies to Denver; most of those contributing send funds to Denver (though some local activities are locally supported).

About 4 percent of the practicing American devotees are engaged in full-time service for the Mission. Perhaps half of these are in local ashrams or other devotee centers. The balance, perhaps five hundred, work with or through the national headquarters in Denver and are recruited from all over the United States. These people are involved in organizational activity, which has been centralized, partly because this is more efficient and partly because the activity is so young (it began in mid-1972) that there are too few in any one city to support it adequately.

Denver itself houses most of the centralized activities. Shri Hans Educational is an organization of devotees with teaching interests and credentials working to establish boarding schools and childcare centers across the country. In cities with interested devotees who do not want to join the effort in Denver, there are collaborative groups working locally. Denver also houses Shri Hans Publications, Inc., which published and promoted the Mission's monthly magazine, And It Is Divine, and the international semimonthly newspaper, Divine Times, until publication was suspended after Millennium '73. Also in Denver is Divine Travel Services, which handles all travel arrangements for Maharaj Ji, his family, mahatmas, and devotees on Mission business, as well as the charters for national and international gatherings. There is a Women's Spiritual Right Organization dedicated to reaching out to persons in prisons, mental institutions, and hospitals. Groups of devotees in Denver operate such businesses as gas stations, restaurants, and stores. Other cities also have centralized operations. Los Angeles, for instance, is the home of the Shri Hans Productions, Inc., the film and recording studios operated by the Mission.

Since the number of American devotees continually increases, the manpower pool for full-time service has grown from six people in 1971 to over one thousand in early 1974. Because both manpower and income are (in theory) increasing geometrically (through propagation), every project has its sights set far beyond its immediate capabilities; for DLM hopes to include all humanity in its membership.

Local Activity

All local activity is supportive or propagational. In the San Francisco Bay Area there is one ashram (in two households) which has about thirty residents. Ashram residents are celibate; eat no meat, fish, or eggs; drink no alcohol; and smoke no cigarettes. They are expected to obey their general secretary (assigned from Denver), to be ready to transfer to another area at any time, and to do whatever work is assigned. Most hold full-time jobs outside the ashram and put in two hours of service in the evening; all adhere to a rigid schedule of Sat Sang, service, and meditation from 5:30 to 10:30.

Despite the apparent severity of ashram regulations, the household operates as a brotherhood (housing both men and women), though the general secretary has the final word. A good general secretary is a good brother and a good administrator in the business sense.

Most ashram residents are either employed outside full time or self-employed. Residents operate a small business called Divine Services Company, which provides such miscellaneous services to households as hauling, painting, plumbing, and electrical repair. The ashram also coordinates maintenance activities for Divine Sales, a used-goods store in a poor district in San Francisco. Maintenance includes manning the store and "jumbling," or going from door to door soliciting donations for the store's inventory.

The ashram is responsible for coordinating the service of all devotees in the Bay Area, for keeping all devotees informed of financial needs or scheduled programs, for housing mahatmas and ,other distinguished visitors and Maharaj Ji, for preparing all public programs, for coordinating child care for devotees engaged in service or attending Sat Sang in the ashram, and for any other task that might be assigned from Denver.

There are ashrams operating similarly in almost every state in the United States and in over fifty countries. Almost all the United States ashrams operate a Divine Sales outlet and a Divine Services Company. There are two ashrams in California, in San Francisco and in Los Angeles.

"Premie Centers" are communal households of devotees which are subject to moderate regulation by Denver, primarily through the local ashram. These may have married, noncelibate couples, and children residing in them. They turn over at least 30 percent of the household income to national headquarters, must keep a "presentable" household, and must not eat meat, eggs, or fish, or smoke or drink on the premises. Although they are not otherwise subject to orders from the Mission, they have obviously made a serious commitment to service to the Mission and to cooperation with its activity.

A "premie house" is simply a household of devotees. It may have only a husband and wife or as many as thirty individuals living together. Such households are not subject to external regulation and are held together by a common commitment and cooperation. Devotees seem inclined to combine households as their devotion increases, and these households are natural clusters of devotees, often with strong personal attachments to one another.

The Bay Area has two formal Premie Centers, another five premie houses with seven or. more residents each, and over one thousand practicing devotees, many of them in smaller premie houses. Devotees who are not in one of the more formal households are hard to keep track of, and estimates of their number vary. The best estimates are based on attendance at unadvertised programs when Guru Maharaj Ji or one of his mahatmas is in town. Since many new devotees will appear only for programs, it is some time before the ashram can actually identify those who practice the knowledge after receiving it.

Activities and numbers have developed more slowly in San Francisco than in many other American cities. Other cities operate numerous small businesses and have specialized households of painters or musicians or others of similar interest organizing to earn funds for the Mission cooperatively.

Finances

In spite of the superficial order of DLM bureaucracy and organization, the Mission runs on the energy generated by devotion and what devotees call "grace." Since the first order of business is to spread the knowledge, only a small percentage of the Mission's operations are profitable because the scope of activity is always larger than resources can technically afford. And It Is Divine, for instance, sold for a dollar a copy; but many thousands more copies were given away than were sold, because it was a primary vehicle of propagation. It was a full-color, slick, seventy-page magazine with international news; features on subjects of humanitarian interest like old age, ecology, or the history of Arab-Israeli conflict; and Sat Sang. The October 1973 issue had full-page color advertisements for Natural Resources Defense Council, Humane Society of America, and Organic Gardening magazine-all donated by the Mission. Advertising was not sold.

Divine Light Mission operates almost entirely without capital, and this is the source of great numbers of "grace" stories. In 1972, for example, the Mission wanted to buy a small plane to transport Guru Maharaj Ji and his family around the United States. They had negotiated a price and secured a loan from the bank. The down payment was nearly $18,000, with no serious chance of generating it even in donations. The owner of the plane eventually put up the money himself, to satisfy the bank, because he "liked Guru Maharaj Ji." That is not a common reason for such unbusinesslike behavior. The owner of DLM's national headquarters building has repeatedly paid for extensive alterations to the building as activities burgeoned, though he ostensibly has no relation to the Mission other than landlord. To devotees these are miracle stories, and there are hundreds of them.

Grace operates at all levels. Devotees are agreed that anyone who decides to go to India, for instance, will come up with the money to go; and devotees report finding hundreds of dollars in kitchen drawers, being approached by strangers and offered unsolicited money, and other bizarre tales of money being generated by devotion. This alters the premise on which most of us operate, that financially we are on our own; neither devotees nor the Mission itself are bound by that notion. The Mission decided to hold Millenium '73 in the Houston Astrodome, to house all devotees in hotels and motels, to feed all attenders, and to fly people from poorer nations like India free of charge and made arrangements for all activities on the assumption that the necessary funds would be forthcoming. At this writing, DLM is still heavily in debt from that function, is restricting some operations, like And It Is Divine, but is no less optimistic.

In theory, all funds on which the Mission runs are donations, which come from a number of sources:

1. All income of ashrams and businesses belong to the Mission, which in turn provides each ashram with a household budget. Presumably, the income of an ashram or household operating a business in the Mission's name is greater than the funds needed to support the local unit. This does not account for the costs of supporting new businesses and new ashrams that do not yet operate in the black; and since DLM is above all a growing concern, it is hard to estimate how these balance out.

2. All devotees are encouraged and nagged to donate funds of their own. They are also encouraged, on rare occasion, to solicit funds from nonmembers. Some devotees have signed pledges to donate a dollar a day to provide the Mission with some reliable income.

3. Premie Centers turn over 30 percent of their household income to the Mission. This provides the Mission with a regular income, though centers are not yet numerous.

4. Periodic crises require fund raising across the country. To pay the debts remaining from the Houston event, devotees all over the country turned over their own possessions to Divine Sales, which had crash garage sales, attended flea markets, and invented numerous activities to dispose of the goods.

Efforts to get more concrete information on funds is futile, since all emergencies are covered somehow and the pending emergencies are expected to be resolved by devotion and grace. Since that is the usual outcome, there is no empirical reason for devotees to question their faith. The simplest economic explanation of how the Mission manages to stay solvent is that, because the number of supporting members increases so rapidly, it is always possible to pay yesterday's debts, even though it seems impossible that tomorrow's will be paid. Like an inflating economy, the Mission is protected only so long as it expands.

MANPOWER

All Mission activities depend entirely on volunteered labor and funds. The knowledge itself, the primary source of satisfaction to devotees, is independent of the Mission proper, and DLM has no power to discipline or enforce agreements. Devotees move in and out of service roles or financial commitments, and DLM has little chance to predict or control income or staffing.

Nevertheless, most ashrams are crowded, as are most premie houses, which cannot find suitable housing as quickly as needed. Volunteers for full-time service arrive in Denver every day, and those who will go anywhere or do anything can be assigned to areas where manpower is needed. These numbers depend entirely on the success of the propagation effort. Their willingness to be assigned anywhere is generally a consequence of their relation to the knowledge and to Guru Maharaj Ji.

Devotees find Divine Light Mission to be unreliable and unpredictable, and usually unreasonable. No devotee goes to work for DLM because the Mission makes a good employer. One loses control over where one lives, what one eats, whether one gets medical care or a new shirt when needed, and whether one gets the kind of work one prefers. The Mission encourages devotees to feel that they should not need such control and that the apparent chaos is really God's order working through them; their role is to surrender and flow with the reality. To many, DLM is a discouragingly unresponsive employer. But they donate their services anyway, whether from extra time or full time, and do whatever work is assigned, rarely with any grumbling once they have begun. When I returned from a month in India in 1972, I asserted that the most important lesson learned there was "to never let Divine Light Mission have control over my life again." That feeling quickly faded, as it did for most of the four thousand who had made that trip, and was replaced by a strong sense that the entire trip was grace. Why?

It was stated earlier that the impact of this movement on Western social order rests entirely on the nature of the religious experience and on the consequences of that experience, not on the nature of any beliefs. Devotees consistently claim that it is the experience that moves them, not Divine Light Mission and not conviction, which is sometimes quite unstable. Guru Maharaj Ji's devotees have met God in the flesh, as many understand their experience, and their gratitude and enthusiasm dominate their lives and activity.

The first and most concrete consequence of the meditation is an increase in energy and in personal integration, which permits devotees to invest tremendous time and effort in Mission activity and in propagation without fatigue or disorientation. For a rapidly growing, multipurpose organization with executive power concentrated in the hands of youth, these are invaluable attributes to the labor force. It does not explain why devotees engage in service, but it does explain how they have managed to do as much as they have in less than two years and with no real letup in pace.

The growing sense of devotees that reality is not quite what it has always seemed produces an extraordinary tolerance of irrational behavior and contributes to their ability to live in chaotic, constantly re-forming communities and activities with peers who are themselves in the midst of great personal change. Devotees claim that what seems absurd is simply the Creator's trying to call one's attention to something, that conflict is a vehicle for expanding one's awareness. It is in the experience of Christ as the intercessor-the real medium of communication between man and God, and man and man-that devotees become oriented toward the call of the Creator rather than the irritations of the immediate context. All experiences, then, become lessons with cosmic significance, and the devotee's role is to surrender to the lesson. To become wrapped up in anger or intolerance is to refuse to listen to the lesson, to become so occupied with one's own definition of the situation that one cannot learn the Lord's.

The rest of the power of the movement is the power of happiness itself: where it is indestructible the individual becomes a less demanding person, and it is contagious. A great amount of unskilled labor is required of devotees, though devotees are often quite well educated and middle class enough to prefer more demanding work. The Mission could not function if it used only the best-sharpened skills of each devotee, if only because it is not efficient enough to arrange that. All activities depend on a large group willing to do whatever needs doing, and ego satisfaction must come from some source other than work, or place of residence, or physical comfort. Devotees explain that they will do anything they can to express their love for Guru Maharaj Ji, and nothing they can do will ever express it fully. Perhaps their general sense of wellbeing alleviates any need for the more conventional rewards of American life, and meditation is in fact a substitute for these.

One possible explanation of unconditional devotion is that Maharaj Ji's devotees are so rewarded by God himself that other potential rewards pale in significance. Another involves the nature of "worship" among devotees, most of whom had a normal young adult reluctance to be dependent on anyone or to prostrate themselves before another human being or to let anybody tell them what to do, and all of whom rapidly lose that reluctance when they practice meditation. One devotee, a near-Ph.D. in sociology and very skeptical of the knowledge for some time after receiving it, said, "I once thought I could never prostrate myself before any man, that it was obscene. Now I find it difficult to pass his picture without falling on my face with gratitude." The gratitude is the primary key, perhaps, together with the sense that devotees share that the God within and the guru without are not distinguishable, and that he runs this universe with no other object than to love and reward them. That is a powerful experience, whatever its foundation, and unconditional service is a small return.

Since the primary business of Divine Light Mission is propagation, and since its activities seem to rely on constant increase in numbers, the giving of Sat Sang is the primary service of every devotee. There are devotees who heard about Maharaj Ji from strangers in bars and coffee shops, who came through friends or relatives, who read the magazine or the newspaper, who stumbled on a campus or other public program and were fascinated. But most simply become acquainted with some happy person who convinced them that the happiness was available for the asking from that boy guru, whoever he is.

If one believes he has met God in a house across town, he is going to drag every friend he can find to share the experience. This is the prime mover of the propagation effort, and it is a bit different from more traditional propagation movements. It is very common for a group of converts-whether to Communism or Christianity-to seek company and increase of their numbers, but such groups usually are held together by their belief that they will see perfection. Maharaj Ji's devotees are moved by the sense that they have seen it, that the kingdom is "at hand." While they do not claim to be instant buddhas themselves, they do claim to be living in perfect happiness, and they have a strong desire to share it.

It is that overflow of good feeling that makes this movement so contagious around the world. Particularly for a generation exhausted by conflict, the idea that one can fall in love with the world and know it to be perfect is a compelling one. Guru Maharaj Ji sets out little dogma to attract followers. For those who find asceticism attractive, there are mahatmas telling them that all activities are right in moderation; for those who think everyone should live in an ashram, there is Maharaj Ji's mother telling them that the householder performs the highest service, that of providing shelter and training for the children of God; and for those who are attracted to Eastern mysticism and alienated from Christianity, there is Maharaj Ji himself asserting that Jesus was the Word made Flesh, and therefore God, and therefore always here in the human heart, in the Spirit. The promise is a simple one, and all efforts of devotees and nondevotees alike to complicate it backfire rapidly.

Maharaj Ji says, "Give me your love and I will give you peace. Give me the reins of your life, and I will give you salvation. I am the source of peace in this world." He says only that, and devotees propagate by swearing that he can prove it to any who receive his knowledge and meditate on it for a few months at most.

THE KNOWLEDGE IN THE FUTURE

Where this movement fits into companion movements throughout the West, and whether it will endure and expand to affect the social order, are big questions. People are unlikely to abandon experiences where they feel the potential of their actions is being fully met, which differentiates this movement from unsuccessful political movements, for instance, and which may also differentiate it from contemporary millennial movements that require external miracles to come to fruition. Though many of Maharaj Ji's devotees are convinced that Maharaj Ji himself is the promise of Revelation, and the very Christ that many await, their conviction is simply the icing on the cake. If Maharaj Ji told them that Jesus was coming soon, they would be delighted at the new revelation and would modify theology to fit their experience.

Although Maharaj Ji is himself from India, is a guru, and offers a meditation technique, he is not clearly Eastern and is a subject of great controversy in India, where he is also a major heretic. Any man who says that all scriptures are true, that Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Jesus, Krishna, and a host of others were all Christ, is a heretic everywhere. To many Western devotees he is plainly a Christian, but there is no clear definition there either. As a consequence, it is difficult to place Divine Light Mission among the religious movements in the West, and it operates as a bit of an outcast, refusing to join associations of different groups, and simultaneously refusing to admit that they are not also "premies, though they don't know it." Devotees will listen to Sat Sang from anyone and will give it to anyone, treating none who are not also devotees as if they had the whole truth and none as if they had missed the boat entirely. It is disconcerting to a Jehovah's Witness, for instance, to hear a devotee agree with every word he says and then respond with, "Except that He's already here; I know what you say is true because I've seen it."

That is always the sticker: if Maharaj Ji's devotees are experiencing what they say they are, then this movement is nowhere near its end; if they are not, it may reach its limits at any time. Devotees agree to that and recommend to the skeptic that he "try it.” Always the issue is reduced to the question of proof, since this particular movement asserts that evidence is available for the asking and that to demand it is legitimate. That often puts critics on the defensive, which may partly explain the hostile media treatment of this movement.

I doubt that the entire world population will be caught up in this movement, but the intensity of feeling many seem to have about it-whether for or against-suggests that it poses some issues important to this culture. The most basic issue is tied up with the worship by seemingly sane, educated, and articulate youth of a fellow human being rather than some less tangible deity. I have heard horror expressed by Christians who were unmoved by the suggestion that Christ had worshippers in his lifetime. Complete humility before a fellow mortal seems difficult to swallow.

On whether this movement will visibly and independently affect the social order, I can offer no opinion. It is distinguishable from popular American movements like est or Transcendental Meditation or Scientology by the emphasis on worship. But other Eastern movements, like 3HO, carry the same component, though not the suggestion that the master is indistinguishable from the deity. The outcome of any one movement seems clearly tied up with the futures of the other contemporary movements, both because there is obviously some competition for membership and because we do not yet know whether people will progress into more deeply religious movements and experiences if they begin with the more secular ones. Perhaps most will simply return to old business from their present involvement and pursue no further the questions raised by the wave of self-realization efforts.

Nelson

G. K. NELSON , Department of Sociology and Applied Social Studies ,City of Birmingham Polytechnic Birmingham, England, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 21, No. 1, Theory and Policy, (Autumn, 1979), pp. 108-109

Pilarzyk's (1978) interesting account of developments in the Divine Light Mission in the U.S.A. is marred by a confusion in his discussion of the concept of cult. While he is quite correct in describing the work of Wallis (1973, 1974, 1975) as being "in theoretical opposition to Nelson" (Nelson 1968 a.b. 1969), he fails to recognize that the concepts he attributes to Wallis were developed by Nelson. For instance., the concepts of local and centralized cult were developed by Nelson, as was the sub-division olf local cults into "charismatic" and "spontaneous." The argument that local cults tend to develop into centralized cults also was produced by Nelson. These ideas were used in a modified form by Wallis, but in view of the author's reference to Nelson, one might have hoped that these ideas would have been correctly attributed. The paper sets out "to explain theoretically the set of inter-related factors which affected the growth, development and decline of the movement," but it fails in that aim, largely because of the author's concentration on Wallis's theory.

The rise of the DLM cannot be understood apart from what Campbell (1972) described as the "Cultic milieu," an environment associated with the youth culture of the sixties but which by no means was restricted to young people. It was an environment in which some middle class youth rejected both the religious. and the secular values of their elders and attempted to establish an alternative culture which was not homogeneous but contained a number of elements including cults (syncretistic religious movements), non-Christian religious movements (particularly Buddhist and Hindu sects, such as DLM), sects (Christian religious movements), and the drug culture and the commune move- ment. In my definition of the term, the DLM was not a true cult in its early period, but it has developed into a cult as it has adapted to the Western way of life.

It would seem that the decline of the DLM described by Pilarzyk can best be accounted for by Maharah Ji's loss of charisma which followed the break up of the "Holy Family" consequent to his marriage and his adoption of a Western life style. Unfortunately, Pilarzyk does not go on to show that Maharaj Ji attempted to recover his position by changing the direction of the movement in a process of secularization. During this period, he democratized the movement, gave up his claim to divinity, and proclaimed himself to be a secular leader.

Schnabel 1982

Originally copied from: User:Andries/Prem Rawat/Non-English#Schnabel 1982.

Started p. 32-33 translation 11:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

• (In Dutch:) Schnabel, Paul. Tussen stigma en charisma: nieuwe religieuze bewegingen en geestelijke volksgezondheid ("Between stigma and charisma: new religious movements and mental health"). Erasmus University Rotterdam, Faculty of Medicine, Ph.D. thesis, 1982. Deventer, Van Loghum Slaterus, ISBN 90-6001-746-3. On-line version (2007): http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/schn016tuss01_01/index.htm in Digital library for Dutch literature- Chapter II, page 33, Chapter IV page 99, page 101-102, Chapter V, page 142

p. 32-33 (compare google's automatic translation)
	II nieuwe religieuze bewegingen in nederland ‘Ce que ma secte enseigne est obscur... et c'est en vertu de cette obscurité qu'il faut le croire... ma secte est extravagante, donc elle est divine.’ Voltaire		II New religious movements in the Netherlands; ‘What my cult teaches is obscure ... and because of this obscurity it should be believed ... my cult is extravagant, thus it is divine’ Voltaire
	1. De ‘Divine Light Mission’ (DLM) De Divine Light Mission werd in 1960 opgericht door Sri Hans Maharaj; onder zijn leiderschap was de beweging enkel in India actief en verwierf daar een vrij grote aanhang, vooral in het noorden.		1. The ‘Divine Light Mission’ (DLM) The Divine Light Mission was founded in 1960 by Sri Hans Maharaj; under his leadership the movement was active exclusively in India and acquired a fairly wide audience there, especially in the north.
	Na de dood van de goeroe in 1966, begint de beweging zich onder zijn opvolger - de toen achtjarige Maharaj Ji - meer en meer te richten op het westen. In 1971 is het jaar van de eerste wereldreis van goeroe Maharaj Ji, waarna in Londen een ashram (woongemeenschap) wordt opgericht. In Londen worden de eerste Nederlandse premies (volgelingen van de goeroe) geïnitieerd. Ook in Nederland wordt een ashram opgericht (Amsterdam). Maharaj Ji gaat zich steeds meer op het westen oriënteren, gaat in de Verenigde Staten wonen, trouwt met een Amerikaanse en bouwt in de loop der jaren een grote organisatie op. De afstand tot de beweging in India wordt steeds groter. In 1975 mondt dit uit in een breuk tussen Maharaj Ji en zijn moeder, met als gevolg dat Maharaj Ji niet langer geaccepteerd wordt als leider van de Indiase volgelingen.		<general info with some detail about the development of the movement in the Netherlands, explanation of terms like "ashram" and "premie", etc>
	Tot 1975 kent de Divine Light Mission een gestage groei. In 1974 waren er in de USA 50.000 premies, waarvan 1200 in een ashram levend. Twee jaar later was daar nog maar weinig van over en sedertdien is het nog verder teruggelopen. Na de breuk treedt duidelijk een crisis in: mensen trekken zich terug, nieuwe leden krijgt men nauwelijks meer. De beweging wordt daarom gereorganiseerd, maar veel baat heeft dit niet: wat overblijft is een vaste groep premies tussen de 25 en 35 jaar. Aan het hoofd van de beweging staat de goeroe Maharaj Ji. Tot 1980 kende de beweging een zakelijke en een religieuze tak. Onder de zakelijke tak (Divine United Organisation International) vallen reisbureaus, thee- en reformwinkels, een film- en een platenmaatschappij. De zakelijke tak is [p. 33] inmiddels afgestoten. De religieuze tak (Divine Light Mission) bestaat uit goeroe Maharaj Ji (de absolute meester), een kring van door de goeroe aangestelde religieuze leiders (de initiators) en de leden. De goeroe schijnt zich de laatste jaren meer te richten op de leden en zijn rol ook serieuzer op te vatten.		<general info with some detail about the development of the movement in the USA, the family rift, the business branch (DUO international) split off in 1980, leadership structure of the religious movement under Rawat, Rawat having become more serious over time, etc>
	De leden wonen in de ashram, in plaatselijke groepen of onafhankelijk. In Nederland wonen ongeveer 15 personen in de ashram te Amsterdam, de rest in plaatselijke groepen of onafhankelijk. Er zijn naar schatting nog hoogstens 150 aanhangers in Nederland. De ashramleden leven in en werken voor een hechte gemeenschap; ze dragen al hun geld af aan de beweging. Er zijn regelmatig lezingen en bijeenkomsten voor de premies, daarnaast is de ‘persoonlijke relatie’ met de goeroe het belangrijkste.		<info about the Amsterdam ashram, and followers in the Netherlands. Ashram members live in a close-knit community and give up their money to the movement. Importance of lectures, meetings, and personal relationship with Rawat>
	De boodschap van de Divine Light Mission concentreert zich helemaal op de persoon van de goeroe Maharaj Ji. In hem manifesteren zich goddelijke liefde en waarheid. Hieraan kan men deel hebben, door zich volledig over te geven aan de goeroe, die men dan ook altijd zal volgen. Als men dit doet, dan zal men zich bewust worden van de innerlijke wezenskern (Knowledge). ‘Knowledge’ ervaart men tijdens de meditatie; er zijn vier meditatietechnieken, te weten: meditatie op licht, op geluid, op woord en op nectar.		The message of the Divine Light Mission focuses entirely on the person of the guru Maharaj Ji. In him, divine love and truth are manifested. One can take part in this by fully abandoning oneself to the guru, who thus should always be followed. Doing so leads to consciousness of the inner center of being (Knowledge). 'Knowledge' is experienced during meditation. There are four meditation techniques, to wit: meditation on light, sound, word and nectar.
	Naast de meditatie kent de Divine Light Mission nog twee andere grondregels, namelijk: satsang en service. Onder ‘satsang’ verstaat men voordrachten, waarin de kennis gepropageerd wordt, waarin getuigd wordt van de alom-aanwezigheid van Maharaj Ji, waarin raad gegeven wordt ter oplossing van problemen. ‘Service’ betekent dienen en dienst doen. Van ieder lid van de beweging verlangt men dat zij/hij zich inzet voor de beweging, voor de verspreiding en de instandhouding ervan.		Besides meditation there are two more ground rules in DLM, namely satsang and service. ‘Satsang’ is understood as lectures, where knowledge is propagated, where the omnipresence of Maharaj Ji is testified, where advise to solve problems is given. ‘Service’ means to serve and to take service. Every member of the movement is expected to commit her/himself to the movement, and the dissemination and continuation thereof.
	In de presentatie staat de figuur van de goeroe Maharaj Ji voorop. Hij is volkomen meester, die aan ieder de waarheid kan onthullen, die het antwoord heeft op alle vragen. In de werving wordt dan ook altijd verwezen naar de goeroe. Nieuwe leden tracht men te werven door het organiseren van lezingen, het houden van introductieavonden, het toezenden van propagandamateriaal.		The figure of Maharaj Ji is always on the first plane in the presentation. He is perfect master, able to reveal truth to anyone, having an answer to all questions. During recruitment the guru is always explicitly mentioned. New members are recruited by organising lectures and introductory gatherings, mailing of promotional material.
	Literatuur speciaal voor dit onderwerp te raadplegen Van der Lans (1981a), Pilarzyk (1978), Köllen (1980), Foss en Larkin (1978), Messer (1976), Mildenberger (1979), Downtown (1979, 1980).		Literature to be consulted specifically regarding this subject Van der Lans (1981a), Pilarzyk (1978), Köllen (1980), Foss en Larkin (1978), Messer (1976), Mildenberger (1979), Downtown (1979, 1980). [See [2] for Schnabel's bibliography for this book]
p. 99:
	De meest zuivere voorbeelden van charismatisch leiderschap zijn op dit moment wel Bhagwan en Maharaj Ji. Daaruit blijkt meteen al hoe persoonlijke kwaliteiten alleen onvoldoende zijn voor de erkenning van het charismatisch leiderschap. De intelligente, steeds wisselende en dagelijks optredende Bhagwan is niet meer een charismatisch leider dan de verwende materialistische en intellectueel weinig opmerkelijke Maharaj Ji. Als charismatisch leider hebben beiden overigens wel een eigen publiek en een eigen functie.		The purest examples of charismatic leadership are at this moment, still, Bhagwan and Maharaj Ji. This shows immediately that personal qualities alone are insufficient for the recognition of the charismatic leadership. The intelligent, ever-changing Bhagwan who gives daily performances is not more a charismatic leader than the pampered materialistic and intellectually quite unremarkable Maharaj Ji. As charismatic leaders, they, by the way, both have their own audience and their own function.
comments English summary doesn't quite capture the quote which is basicly a comparison between Bhagwan and Maharaj Ji w.r.t. their respective style of charismatic leadership, where, by comparison, Bhagwan's charism is seen as more authentic, without being therefore more of a charismatic leader. They address different target audiences. Full translation now. Applied some tweaks. See also below. --Francis Schonken 16:41, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
pp. 101-102:
	Tegelijkertijd betekent dit echter [dat] charismatisch leiderschap als zodanig tot op zekere hoogte ensceneerbaar is. Maharaj Ji is daar een voorbeeld van. In zekere zin gaat het hier om geroutiniseerd [sic] charisma (erfopvolging), maar voor de volgelingen in Amerika en Europa geldt dat toch nauwelijks: zij waren bereid in juist hem te geloven en er was rond Maharaj Ji een hele organisatie die dat geloof voedde en versterkte.		At the same time, this means however that charismatic leadership, as such, can be staged to a certain degree. Maharaj Ji is an example of this. Certainly, Maharaj Ji's leadership can be seen as routinized charisma (hereditary succession), but for the followers in America and Europe this is hardly significant: they were prepared to have faith specifically in him and Maharaj Ji was embedded in a whole organisation that fed and reinforced that faith.
comments I applied a few tweaks, seems OK as translation. Please check Dutch original, apparently a few minor typos. (checked and updated) Both quotes, this one and the one above, can maybe be summarized as: "Maharaj Ji's charismatic leadership is very effective, even if comparatively shallow." (according to Schnabel of course, I have no idea, never met the guy...) Anyway, the length of the quoted text can be reduced dramatically, for what is needed effectively. --Francis Schonken 15:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC) Schnabel did not use the word "shallow" (Dutch: "oppervlakkig") which I think is a free interpretation of the quote, though I agree that the comparison between Maharaji and Bhagwan/Rajneesh should be explicitly stated. Andries 15:46, 20 January 2007 (UTC) Indeed, he didn't use the word "shallow". Nor did he use the word "spoilt", which, in the context, is a questionable translation of "verwend". "Spoilt"/"verwend" is e.g. used for children ("spoilt brat", etc.); in the context of the quote above "verwend" is rather "accustomed to luxury", imho. It is opposed to Bhagwan's daily efforts, as far as I read the quote: the Dutch text does not imply that, by comparison, Bhagwan would be "unspoilt". I summarized, like you did, and I think "shallow" an appropriate summary of "verwend"/"materialistisch"/"intellectueel weinig opmerkelijk"/"tot op zekere hoogte geënsceneerd"/... If you don't agree with that summary, that's OK with me, I only tried to indicate ways to shorten the quote so that it would become usable for the Prem Rawat article. --Francis Schonken 16:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC) My dictionary (Van Dale Dutch->English) gives as the main translation of "verwend" the word "spoilt" with as alternative "pampered". No, I do not agree with your proposed summary. As you will understand the subject is sensitive so this is not the place for free interpretations or loose summaries. (Though I admit that my original summary was insufficiently contextualized.)Andries 16:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC) Anyway, thus far above we have two quotes with what I think to be a more or less acceptable English translation. Now, the next step if you want to do anything with these quotes, is probably best to propose them at the talk:Prem Rawat page. Try to find consensus if they (and/or anything else from Schnabel) should be used in the Prem Rawat article (I think definitely they're too long and can be shortened). Then, next step: try to find consensus *where* in the Prem Rawat article you'll put material sourced to Schnabel (as you agreed to, it would be best not to have these by-person commentaries in a separate section any more. For example a ==Teachings and spirituality== section, or a section called ==Prem Rawat as spiritual leader==, or whatever most appropriate could be started in the Prem Rawat article. Such section should always try to give all viewpoints on such section topic, which is more than only Schnabel's view. --Francis Schonken 16:57, 20 January 2007 (UTC) I am not going to wait for consensus for inclusion when there are partisan editors who seek every excuse to remove all critical remarks. Nevertheless I basically agree with your proposal that the entry should be organized per subject or chronological, not per POV or with a criticism section. Andries 17:08, 20 January 2007 (UTC) I would appreciate if you left these type of comments private. I could argue for a similar partisanship on your side if one is to judge for your misleading translation. Let's focus on improving the article, shall we? ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 17:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC) Jossi, you should tell Francis to keep these comments private because he copied my comments out of my user space. Andries 11:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC) (@ Andries:) Do as you like, I recommend working by Wikipedia:Consensus nonetheless. I don't think any other approach would work here. --Francis Schonken 17:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

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As this page demonstrates, there is a a wealth of infomation about Rawat from scholars. My point is, and has always been, that we cannot just include negative scholastic opinion. But since the article is already too long I don't believe balancing the criticism with an equal amount of positive or neutral material will work. The article would be twice as big. I believe the only solution is to leave academic opinion out of the article (academic sourced facts are fine) and simply list the scholars under the heading "academic articles" and let the reader investigate if they wish. Flooding this article with more academic opinion will make it difficult to read.Momento 09:02, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

No, again, there is not "a wealth of infomation about Rawat from scholars."; there is not a single scholarly article that gives an extensive description of Rawat's life. Again, if you think otherwise then show me one such article. Andries 10:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a wealth of information, and we have only got started. You could help if you wish. ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 01:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I am still waiting for this wealth of scholarly information about the life of Prem Rawat and I do not believe that you will be able to provide it. Andries 17:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You make no sense whatsover, Andries. There is plenty of information already here, and there is more coming. What is the point you are trying to make? Is that the same point your are trying to make on other biographical articles, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 17:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

What evidence to the contrary. Where is the extensive scholarly description of Rawat's life that I have been asking for many times. Andries 19:17, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You make no sense, and you do not explain what you are saying. That is quote offending, you know? ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 21:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

What I mean to say is that in contrast to what Momento asserts, there is not an extensive scholarly description of Rawat's life. There is a lot of information about the DLM, but not about Rawat's life. Andries 21:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Moot point, Andries. Scholarly material about DLM always refers to Prem Rawat's life, teachings, controversies, etc. ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 21:17, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Hunt's article is excellent. I'd like to put it all in rather than the three sentences you selected.Momento 11:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Stoner and Parke 1977

All Gods Children: The Cult Experience - Salvation Or Slavery? by CARROL STONER AND JO ANNE PARKE

The New Religions ... Why Now? p. 36

WHAT MAKES THE LIGHT DIVINE?

The Divine Light Mission is attempting to take a more respectable approach in its efforts to attract new premies (as the devotees are called), and it will be no coincidence if the new methods are also more financially advantageous for the Mission. Once Divine Light proselytized among druggies and dropouts, promising a constant high without drugs, much as the Krishnas did. But a contemporary premie recruit is more likely to be a student, musician, artist, lawyer, or teacher-a well-educated man or woman who is, or is destined to become, a solid member of the community.

Some of the communal houses where premies live have been closed, but five of the largest and most successful remain open. Many of today's young premies are scattered about cities in communal apartments, rather than together in one large communal house. However, their physical dispersion seems in no way to have altered their communal dedication to the Mission. But a whirlpool of controversy swirls around the system of ashrams (the communal houses where devotees live together).

In the beginning the group looked for followers who wanted to devote all of their time to Mission work and their newfound meditative techniques. Complaints began, charging that the group was a religious cult out to capture the minds and spirits of unaware young men and women who had wanted only to expand their minds and improve their psyches, but instead fell into a full-time premie trap.

Enthralled by the guru's meditative techniques, young people by the score succumbed to the entreaties of newfound Mission friends to move into an ashram and devote their lives to Mission work. Once inside an ashram, they often became as fanatical and as single-minded as members of the most extreme religious cults. It wasn't long before the Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission was being called a pernicious religious cult on the order of the Unification Church, Love Israel's Church of Armageddon, the Krishna Consciousness Movement, and others around the country that persuade converts to give up everything for lives of sacrifice and concentration on new group goals.

In order to evaluate charges that Divine Light is a destructive religious cult, it is important to compare the Mission to both the most deceitful religious cults and to the self-help programs which neither offer communal life structures nor encourage practitioners to give up all outside interests. Some compare Divine Light's meditative "knowledge" techniques to the meditation practices of Transcendental Meditation, explaining that both are do-it-yourself systems that can be used to enrich one's life.

But the comparison does not work. The Mission's three-pronged program does not depend solely on the techniques of meditation, but also on satsang, or reinforcement of a belief in the benefits of meditation through discussion with others who do it, and on service work performed for the Mission without pay.

To get the most out of being a premie, a follower is encouraged to practice vegetarianism and celibacy as well as abstention from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Premies will say that nothing is forbidden in Divine Light, but they will also emphasize that each follower ought to give his first allegiance to the Mission. Consequently fervent believers form new friendships with fellow believers, eventually cutting ties with disapproving friends outside of Divine Light and ultimately breaking with their families who do not condone or endorse their new lifestyles. A college student who sets up an altar to Guru Maharaj Ji in his dormitory room and sits quietly meditating may be the subject of derision and scorn. He can be no more comfortable with his practices while living at home with parents who are obviously antagonistic toward his new beliefs. The final step in disassociation with the outside world often comes when a premie leaves his home and friends to move into the communal living structure provided by the Mission. Here, with other likeminded premies, he can practice "knowledge" fulltime and devote his life to the service of his guru and the Mission.

While the ashrams have often been self-supporting they have not been a good source of income for the Mission. Unlike the Moonies, the Children of God, or the Hare Krishnas, Divine Light Mission members do not sell anything. They do not solicit on street corners, selling candy, flowers, peanuts, or literature. And unlike the Church of Scientology, Guru Maharaj Ji's group does not charge for the courses or the teaching of the techniques of "knowledge." The group gets its money through gifts and the tithing of its members. The more gainfully employed a premie is, the higher the tithe the Mission receives.

The Divine Light Mission knows that to close all the ashrams, which are not only communal residences but also serve communities as a central meeting place where premies can come for nightly satsang, would seriously disrupt the group's cohesion. Instead, today's premies, whether they live in ashrams, communal apartments, or in their own homes, are encouraged to come regularly to the ashram for satsang or reinforcement of their beliefs. They are encouraged to remember what Mission spokesman Joe Anctil told us, "The ashram is a state of mind, not a place to live."

Premies recruit to their ranks by personal witnessing to friends and to strangers. A young woman premie who works as a full-time secretary at a Catholic college says she feels confident that some of her associates at work will become interested in Divine Light once they are impressed with her gentle ways and peaceful demeanor, qualities she is sure are fruits of her Divine Light practice.

The group also appeals through newspaper and Yellow Page advertising in cities where it has centers. Theirs is a soft-sell approach, and it seems to work.

There is a heightened interest in mind-expansion techniques in the United States, so it isn't surprising that continuing numbers of young people are finding their way to Divine Light centers to hear about the knowledge. We have attended the introductory lectures that come before the techniques of meditation are taught to recruits and we were amazed by two things. There were, each night, more than twenty new people at the lectures, all of whom were there because a friend had marveled to them about the fruits of the experience of meditation. And the lectures were so vague, filled with so much profundity and so little concrete information that we wondered how the lecturers were able to keep the attention of the recruits, let alone convert them.

But meditation is intriguing and mysterious and the Divine Light premies are, individually, compelling witnesses for their faith. True premies say they are happier than before. They believe that the liquid they taste when they put their tongues to the back of their throats in one technique of the knowledge is indeed nectar, not the mucus of a post-nasal drip. They believe the light they experience when they press on their eyes is sight through a "third eye," the pineal gland, which the guru contends is the vestige of an extra eye humans had at some point in their evolution. Premies don't allow that the sensation of light might simply be a physiological reaction to pressure on the cornea. They also believe that the vibrations they feel and hear when they cup their hands over their ears put them in touch with the source of all life.

What the premies really have may not be the truth of all truths, but just another effective method for meditating, for altering one's consciousness. What they may not understand is that they could learn to meditate for free and with no continuing obligations from a book at the library. Meditation, when practiced as a calming, leveling device, is a method of attaining a degree of inner peace and tranquility that should not be discounted. However, it does stand scientifically as a consciousness-altering technique and under its influence a mind is susceptible to suggestion. It is a medically accepted means of alleviating the ravages of stress. But when practiced to excess, meditation can "bliss out" a person to the point of inactivity and inertia, stifling creativity much the same way overindulgence with alcohol or marijuana can. These excesses are the major fears of Divine Light's opponents.

Recruiting p. 65

Guru Maharaj Ji claims to understand the key to the essence and spirit of knowledge and truth. He says he is in touch with the force of life that lurks in the inner recesses of all living things. He promises the same to those who will follow him. "He who seeks truth, finds it," the young guru tells his disciples. If by chance a new devotee doesn't find what the guru promises when he practices the guru's meditative techniques, the fault of course is not the guru's but the premies. A disappointed premie will be told that he "hasn't grown enough" to experience the "knowledge." Consequently, he will keep coming back to the oracle for a taste of the truth he has been promised, and so desperately seeks. It is mystifying to see young people become so dependent on the praise and promises of a cult or its leader that they will do nearly anything they are told to do.

Some cult critics, including the controversial deprogrammer and hero of most anticult parents, Ted Patrick, charge religious cults with using hypnotism to recruit young men and women into their ranks. Patrick told the California State Senate Subcommittee on Children and Youth that these groups use "on-the-spot hypnosis," when recruiting. ". . . A person can come up to a person on the street and talk about anything. They can be singing or playing a guitar and the only thing they want you to do is look them straight in the eyes for five or ten minutes and you believe everything and go with these people."

We have yet to meet a cult member, or former cultist, who has convinced us that he was hypnotized into a new religion. But it does seem apparent that some religious cults use recruiting practices that in the world of business would be labelled "deceptive marketing practices." An honest contract between religion and convert cannot be made if information about the group, its identity, and the degree of committment necessary for members to belong is withheld.

Theology p. 77

The Divine Light Mission (from its Denver offices in a Victorian building resembling a turn-of-thecentury department store that has been remodeled, but never renovated) is trying to tell the world that it is not a religion. While the philosophy of the young Guru Maharaj Ji, leader of the movement, has no elaborate theology, what theology is has reflects Hinduism, not Christianity and Judaism, from whose ranks come the masses of its membership.

The Divine Light Mission gives equal billing to all well-known religions and their scriptures, the Torah and all the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, and the Bhagavadgita. Perhaps because the movement originated in India it emphasizes the teachings of the Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavadgita. The God of Divine Light resembles the impersonal concept of infinite power and energy of the Hindu omnipresence more than it does Western man's image of a rational and willful God who created the Universe and has a plan for it.

Premies learn that their guru is a messiah in a direct line of Perfect Masters that includes Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Lord Krishna, Shri Hans (the young guru's late father), and the guru himself. The issue of conflict between Divine Light teachings and Christianity or Judaism is seen in the answer to a premie's question: "Just who is the Guru Maharaj Ji?"

The answer often given by other premies is, "The Guru Maharaj Ji is God." Sometimes he is told that the Hindu faith, the springboard of Divine Light, holds that God can have many manifestations, many incarnations.

A rabbi reminds us, "For Jews there can be no other God but God." Christians, who have accepted the divinity of Jesus Christ as the son, of God and savior of man, do not accept the idea of many incarnations.

Leaders of the Divine Light Mission contend the movement is not a religion. They now say their work has been impeded by the Hindu trappings that many followers have invoked to "enrich the experience of meditation." But whether premies have promoted "Hindu trappings and their guru's divinity," in much the same way many Americans and Europeans have sought the life explanations in Eastern religion and writing, or whether the Guru Maharaj Ji himself claims that he is God is a question of some importance.

The methods of self-discipline practiced by premies are (other) aspects of Hinduism which have found their way into Divine Light philosophy. Celibacy, abstention from the use of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, and the mission's highly touted vegetarian diet are stepping stones on the divinely lit path to enlightenment. And in true Hindu fashion, the Mission acts, not as a lawgiver but as a dispenser o: advice. The disciplines are recommended, not commanded.

Maharaj Ji teaches that God is the source of all life. "God is an omniscient power that is hidden in the secret recesses of all living things. ..." The guru claims that he alone has the key to the knowledge of the source of God. He has promised his premies that with this key (his meditative techniques), they can get in touch with this source. His God is, then, an energy that is always present and cannot be removed by temporal circumstances. Maharaj Ji does not claim to give God to his devotees, but to put them in touch with the God that has been present in them all along.

Armed with the knowledge of his own private God, a premie should be able, according to the guru, to handle any situation with maturity and strength. "The mind and the thoughts are obstacles to the experience of God," the guru says. His interpretation of the knowledge is an experience rather than an intellectualization of the deity.

The young "Perfect Master" of the Divine Light premies, whose full name is Prem Pal Singh Rawat, was a tiny boy when his father, Shri Hans Ji, traveled about India spreading 'the word of the knowledge. Although he was the son of a wealthy family, Shri Hans took his ministry to the poor. When little Prem's father died, his mother, ignoring the Western tradition of primogeniture, named the youngest of her four sons as the inheritor of his father's mission.

Together the family continued to minister to the poor for several years and the widow and her four sons became known in their region of India as the "holy family." Divine Light came to the United States after a drug-dealer, in India to close a deal, tumbled upon the ministry and persuaded the teen-age guru to visit him in the United States. The discoverer of Guru Maharaj Ji (Great King) put a strong arm on his cohorts, back in Boulder, Colorado, to finance the trip, and they obliged. Maharaj Ji's benefactors had no apparent intention to capitalize on the crusade they designed for him, but they did provide the boy guru with all the public relations acumen known to the world of pop culture. One 0f the members of the group had worked for the rock group "The Grateful Dead" and was well-versed in the promotional tactics of the recording industry.

And so the chubby holy boy and his religion were "sold" to the American people using the same gimmickry Procter & Gamble employs to sell soap. More than 80,000 "souls" have, during the past few years, received the guru's knowledge. He has become wealthy. The Divine Light Mission grew from a tiny band of missionaries to a massive business empire. The guru began leading a life that was not in keeping with his image as a holy man, and his mother fumed. He countered by saying that the "souls" in the United States were "poor in spirit but not in body," which by implication says one must live frugally only when trying to evangelize among the poor, and not the affluent.

Today the Mission of Maharaj Ji stands mired in controversy. Joe Anctil, spokesman and public relations director for the group, seems determined to lift the Mission from the muck, even if it means changing its doctrine, as well as its image. At one time the premies called their guru "Lord of the Universe". Now the Mission tells them to call him a teacher.

Anctil and his staff are using the same high-powered public relations techniques to change the Mission's image that the guru's original benefactors used to promote the movement in the first place. Divine Light leaders seem to think their Mission has more of a future if it concentrates on becoming a business which trains people in the techniques of meditation and discipline than it does if it continues as a religion, worshiping the contemporary incarnation of God.

"This is not India," say Divine Light leaders today. "The Hindu trip is all right there, but for Americans it's phony." And yet the Guru Maharaj Ji says, as Vedantic Hinduism also purports, that the creator-god (Brahman) has incarnated Himself many times in human forms, and will do so again and again. Vedantic Hindus call these incarnations, "avatars," or super-saviors.

"The truth is one, sages call it by various names," Ramakrishna, a leader of the Vedantic Hindus once told his followers. Maharaj Ji and the Divine Light Mission seem to agree.

And so the Mission denies no God, but asserts that its guru is on an equal plane with all Gods. The group says it is compatible with other religions. But for those who recognize the God of the Israelites or the Divinity of Christ, Divine Light is surely a compromise.

Messiahs and Gurus p. 103

GURU MAHARAJ JI

Thousands of sunsets had faded behind the Rocky Mountains since a small band of acid dealers brought a pudgy thirteen-year-old Indian holy boy to a teepee on a mountainside in Boulder so he could teach them and their friends how to meditate and get high without drugs.

Since 1971 the young guru has grown into a less rotund but far richer young man. He's moved from the mountainside teepee, first to a large $86,000 house with a pool in Denver, and then to a half-million-dollar Malibu estate complete with pool, tennis court, and ocean view. He's owned Mercedes Benzes and Maseratis and has been stopped forspeeding. He's had ulcers and has married and become a father. In his early twenties, he's in control of a multimillion-dollar-a-year religious business, the Divine Light Mission.

He had some trouble hanging onto his religious enterprise in 1975, after he married his tall, blonde, and older secretary, Marolyn Lois Johnson, a former United Airlines stewardess from California. Maharaj Ji's mother back in India didn't approve of the marriage, or the young man's gaudy lifestyle. At sixteen he was not old enough to marry without parental permission in Colorado, so he petitioned the court.

The judge agreed that the boy guru was old enough to marry, saying that he had an income and appeared mature beyond his years, a point confirmed by his most devout followers and disputed by others who tell of water pistol battles and legendary bouts of childish temper. The couple married in 1974 in a posh ceremony at a nondenominational Christian church outside Denver. They now live at the California estate with their two small children when they are not traveling on Mission business. The organization still maintains the Denver home as a place for Maharaj Ji to stay when he is in the city. But most of the time, premies live in the house. When their guru comes to Denver, they move out.

After his marriage, the young guru's mother, Rajeswari Devi (known as Mata Ji to premies) disowned her youngest son, saying she had made a mistake when she named him to succeed his father as head of the religious movement, and named the guru's older brother Bal Bhagwan Ji to direct theMission. Maharaj Ji's reaction was to fight for his place as spiritual master of the Mission, and he went to India, where he and his brother became entangled in a series of legal suits and countersuits. Ultimately the two young men agreed, in a New Delhi court, to drop all charges. Now it appears that while Maharaj Ji is firmly in control of the Divine Light Mission in the United States, his mother and brother have taken the reins of the movement in India.

The Mission's tax-free annual income, revealed by Mission spokesman Joe Anctil as about $3.78 million in 1976, came from gifts, tithings, and annual business earnings. Robert Mischler, the Mission's executive director, has said the group considers itself a religion only for tax purposes. As a religion it is exempt from taxation. Under the Internal Revenue Service regulation no part of the net earnings of a religion may go to a private individual.

Anctil says that 60 percent of the Mission's $315,000 monthly income goes to support the international headquarters in Denver, the homes around the country where the guru and the 250 member staff live. The Mission makes the mortgage payments on both of Maharaj Ji's homes and spends about $200,000 annually from the Mission coffers to support the Mission's full-time premies, its guru, and its business activities.

Michael Garson, a former premie who worked in the Denver headquarters, has a different idea. In an affidavit presented in a British Columbia court he said, "My analysis of the accounts of the Divine Light Mission indicated that approximately 60 percent of the gross receipts are directed to maintain the lifestyle of the Maharaj Ji and those close to him."

In photostats of Mission financial records submitted with his testimony, Garson pointed out an entry of $139,925 marked "special projects." He said it was money "advanced directly to the Maharaj Ji for purposes related directly to his own maintenance."

It is no secret that the Mission has overspent in its brief history and has run up some monumental debts. The guru's millennium celebration at the Houston Astrodome in 1972 left the group sadly in arrears in making payments on debts it incurred at that time. Anctil says at one time the Mission owed more than $650,000 but had been able by late 1976, to reduce that debt to $80,000.

However, the Divine Light Mission is still feeling a financial squeeze. In selling real estate around the country the Mission has closed ashrams. With the closing of ashrams came a decline in income. Where premies move out of the ashrams they no longer turn over their weekly paychecks to the Mission. It must then rely on their voluntary contributions. In December 1976, Anctil said the monthly income from contributions had dropped from a high of more than $100,000 a month to $80,000.

In response to the declining income the Mission has had to consolidate its operations. In addition to the disposal 0f real estate in Denver and elsewhere the Mission has sold its printing business. The business was sold to a premie who, operates it in Denver and charges the Mission for printing work. The computer, which the Mission once used to keep track of its membership around the country, is gone. It was dropped when the costly lease expired.

With the printing business gone and some of the other Mission business activities shut down, premies who worked in those enterprises have had to reconsider their life's work. Many are being encouraged to go back into the world, get a job, and contribute to the Mission by tithing.

But the Mission doesn't show any signs of closing. As Joe Anctil says, "We are changing our image." It appears that the Divine Light Mission and its guru will be around as long as they can determine what the public wants and give it to them. And the guru has what looks like a long life ahead of him.

Contrasts p. 181

DIVINE LIGHT

Meditation is enjoying an immense popularity these days and it isn't something that goes on only in the ashrams of Asiatic gurus like Maharaj Ji. It is happening in the living rooms, family rooms, and bedrooms of affluent middle - aged housewives and executives as well. Why then are these same people incensed when their children want to practice meditation?

In the case of the Divine Light Mission, the question seems to be complicated by one of the oldest questions in history: How can intelligent, rational people prostrate themselves at the feet of selfproclaimed gods or those who claim to be representatives of God? And why do human beings allow others to direct their spiritual and temporal lives?

What then makes the lives of the young premies in the ashrams of the Guru Maharaj Ji so suspect, so criticized? Do premies give the control of their lives to the group, or to their guru? Or is "knowledge" nothing more than a system to enrich and deepen spiritual lives? We went quietly into the ashrams to study the Divine Light techniques and to observe the way of life.

The house the premies chose for the ashram in one large Eastern city is a lovely Victorian mansion with leaded glass windows and intricately carved woodwork that reflect the home's original use as the city seat of a turn-of-the-century industrial magnate. It sits on the edge of the city, in a neighborhood that is "changing" and therefore affordable. The streets are still safe enough for the area to be inhabitable and it is well kept enough to be respectable, bordering on one of this country's most affluent and sprawling landscaped hospital grounds and college campuses.

The mansion has seen both better days and worse. It was being used as a day-care center when the Mission negotiated to buy it a few years ago. They paid a modest figure considering the building's size, location, and condition.

The interior architectural detail is reminiscent of convents, rectories, and the manses that are often part of church properties. There is a definite religious feeling in this house, but instead of pictures of Christ and crucifixes, it is now adorned with the signs of the Divine Light Mission and the young people who live here. In every room, including pantries and bathrooms, there are portraits of Guru Maharaj Ji, the premies' Perfect Master.

The young people have left their mark in other ways. Huge bay windows now hold jungles of houseplants. Just inside the massive carved oak and leaded glass entrance door is a cloakroom, always filled with shoes: leather boots and sneakers along with high-heeled platforms and sandals. Premies, like Moonies and Krishna devotees, do not wear shoes indoors. They pad around the house quietly in socks and slippers.

On one side of the enormous wainscoted entry hall is a staircase that leads to sleeping rooms for the fifteen permanent ashram dwellers. Premies, we are told, sleep two to a room here. On the other side of the hall are floor-to-ceiling carved-oak sliding doors that lead to the living room where nightly satsang is conducted. Here, premies meet to discuss their experiences with Maharaj Ji's knowledge to reinforce their own practice and to convert visitors to the practice of Divine Light meditation.

Beyond the hall is a dining room, with tables set for far more than the handful of premies who live here. Food is important to premies. Vegetarianism is a way of separating them from their previous lifestyles and their families. It is a factor that gives them a sense of commonality. Nearly all the meals here are prepared by Alice, the ashram housemother, and Carol, her assistant. The two are sisters. Alice is in her mid-to-late twenties and says her life as cook and housekeeper is the most satisfying she has ever had. She devotes full time to directing the housekeeping, the grocery shopping, and running the kitchen. The quality of the diet in the ashram is dependent on her skill, and one suspects the kitchen is a gathering place because Alice encourages it. Alice says that as housemother she feels appreciated and important in this group she needs and loves. According to her, the life she led before Divine Light was not a directed or purposeful one. In and out of schools, Alice says she was not the daughter her mother wanted. Although Alice and Carol's mother does not approve of the "religious part" of their premie existence, she does profess to approve of the newfound order the two young women have instilled in their lives.

Carol, too, wants an ashram life. She transferred to the East when her Midwestern ashram closed as part of the Mission's effort to consolidate their holdings. Alice, who had been the assistant housemother, took over her new responsibilities when the old housemother decided to live outside the ashram with another premie and to continue her practice of "knowledge" on a part-time basis. The former housemother now works as a secretary at a Roman Catholic college just down the street from the ashram. She still visits the ashram regularly and she is almost as involved as she was before she got her own apartment.

The day of our visit was the Guru's birthday celebration, and premies had traveled from ashrams in other cities to this big home and its day-long festivities. While Carol served lunch to a houseful of visitors, we washed dishes. And we observed the young men and women who were diligently working at cooking and cleaning the kitchen. Their own mothers would have been impressed by the dedication and concentration surrounding this "thankless" work. Not that the kitchen help was behind-thescenes. Here, premies wandered in and out of the room, helping themselves to tea, helping with dishes and other chores. The normal isolation of the housewife and cook became a communal, everyone-pitchin-and-help festival.

In the butler's pantry between the kitchen an dining room there was a constant supply of hot water. Spiced and flavored teas, honey, milk, ar cups were set out for convenience and the pan:was, for many, the hub of the day's events.

During the visit and on previous occasions when we visited ashrams as undeclared aspirants, there was no persuasion or cajoling for us to become part of this group. We did feel a sense of calm and peace in the ashrams. Most of the premies seemed sincere and rational. They appeared to be in control of their own lives and seemed to be achieving some measure of peace as a by-product of a lifestyle they feel is constructive and healthy.

Yet one week later the Guru Maharaj Ji came to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the same young people were there too. In their guru's presence they lost control, sobbed, swayed, and knelt to kiss his feet. They say he is their guru, not their God.

The program for the celebration said, "Guru Maharaj Ji, my life is within you. From you I was born and to you now I go. Forever I'm yours. My longing is endless."

The chubby little man, whose corpulence suggests he hasn't nearly the self-discipline he inspires in his followers, came to Atlantic City to minister to his devotees and to receive their adulation. (There is always a hubbub of anxiety when the guru is schedsled to appear, since he has often failed to show up at celebrations and festivals in his honor.)

The guru entered the ballroom of the Atlantic City Convention Hall-where the annual Miss America pageant is held-and mounted a satin throne his premies had set there for him. The assembled deotees welcomed their master with frenzied screams, sobs, and outstretched arms. The young, Indian's followers came one by one to bow before him and to kiss his feet.

They heard the little guru tell them, "You cannot battle the mind. It is too complex, too sophisticated. You'll lose. To beat the mind you must ignore it." Our newfound friends were ecstatic, entranced-as though they were not the same people we'd visited a week earlier.

Cult Life p. 264

The second of Lifton's conditions is Mystical Manipulation, and it is evident in nearly all religious cults. Here the potential convert is convinced of the higher purpose within the special group and is shown his individual responsibility in the attainment of that goal. He must be convinced that he is of those chosen by God, or the group leader, for this work for the greater glory of the world.

Never is this condition more apparent than in a satsang lesson of the Guru Maharaj Ji. He has told his devotees, "So whatever extra you have got, give it to me. And the extra thing you have got is your mind. Give it to me. I am ready to receive it. Because your mind troubles you give it to me. It won't trouble me. Just give it. And give your egos to me because egos trouble you, but they don't trouble me. Give them to me. So whatever extra you have in your mind, or your mind itself even, give it to me. I can bear it. It won't affect me. So just try to be holy and try to be a good devotee, a perfect devotee of the guru, who is himself perfect, who is really perfect.

Moved from "Criticism of Prem Rawat"

Prem Rawat (also called Maharaji and formerly known as Guru Maharaj Ji) has at times been the subject of criticism from religious scholars, individuals related to the anti-cult movement of the 1970s, articles in the press and media, and former members.

Observations from scholars

Scholars and authors that have written about Prem Rawat and related organisations without criticism include Andrew Kopkind, Charles H. Lippy, John Bassett McCleary, Ruth Prince and David Riches, Bryan R. Wilson, Dennis Marcellino, Erwin Fahlbusch, Tim Miller, Raymond Lee, Rosemary Goring, George D. Chryssides, David V. Barrett, Lucy DuPertuis, J. Gordon Melton, Jeffrey K. Hadden, Eugene M. Elliot III, Sandra S. Frankiel, and James Lewis.

Barrett, Dupertuis, Melton, and Lewis mention criticism by the media, Rawat's mother, Bob Mishler, and former members respectively. Marc Galanter writes extensively about the Divine Light Mission in 1989 book, Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion.

Stephen A. Kent criticizes Prem Rawat based on his personal experience with Rawat and treats the criticism by the countercultural left on him in the 1970s.

Some critical observations and comments about Rawat and his students are as follows:

Wim Haan

An article written by Wim Haan, a Dutch student of theology, was published in the official magazine of the Free University of Amsterdam in 1981, forwarding several critical statements. In the article, Haan wrote that he was a member of a critical movement within the Roman Catholic Church. In that article, based on his description of his involvement with the DLM over the course of two years in the Netherlands, he asserts that Rawat's battle against the mind sometimes degenerated into complete irrationality, that sometimes premies branded every critical and objective approach as "mind", and that they often avoided discussions with outsiders because these discussions could possibly stimulate the mind.

Stephen Hunt

In 2003, Stephen J. Hunt wrote in Alternative Religions: A Sociological Introduction that Prem Rawat has left "his more ascetic life behind him, he does not personally eschew material possessions. Over time, critics have focused on what appears to be his opulent lifestyle and argue that it is supported largely by the donations of his followers". Hunt also writes that by keeping a low profile the movement has managed to escape the gaze of publicity that surrounds other new religious movements.

Reender Kranenborg

Reender Kranenborg, a Dutch religious scholar and Christian minister, wrote in a 1982 article that "in Maharaj ji's satsangs one can notice a speaking style that resembles very much some Christian evangelization campaigns: a pressing request, an emphasis on the last possibility to choose before it is too late and a terminology in which one is requested to surrender to the Lord, in this case Maharaj ji himself. The contents of the message is not Christian, though." Kranenbord's impression was that the person of Maharaj ji had become more central over the course of years, and that Maharaj ji's assertions about himself and his vocation went further as he became more aware of the extent of his divinity. Kranenborg asserted that Jos Lammers, whom he labelled as an "ex-premie", made similar comments as van der Lans about Maharaji's lifestyle in his interview with the Dutch magazine Haagse Post. He further wrote that when Christians get into dialogue with premies that the lifestyle of the guru is of great importance. He argued that a satguru who drives an expensive cars and owns a big yacht may not be a problem for premies, but it is a problem for Christians and that they should ask premies why Maharaj ji does not live what he considers to be a normal and simple life.

Jan van der Lans

Jan van der Lans, a Dutch professor of psychology of religion wrote in 1981 that Maharaji is an example of a guru who has become a charlatan leading a double life. On the one hand, he tried to remain loyal to the role in which he was forced and to the expectations of his students, yet on the other hand, his private life was one of idleness and pleasure, which was only known to small circle of insiders. According to van der Lans, one could consider him either a fraud or a victim of his surroundings. Van der Lans treated several gurus but was only critical about Rawat, but does not provide citations for his very critical assessment.

Paul Schnabel

In 1982, the Dutch sociologist Dr. Paul Schnabel described Rawat as a pure example of a charismatic leader. Comparing Rawat to Osho, he argued that personal qualities alone are not enough to explain charismatic authority – while he characterized Rawat as materialistic, pampered and intellectually unremarkable compared to Osho, he found Rawat no less of a charismatic leader than Osho. Schnabel stated that Rawat's charisma was in a certain sense routinized (inherited) charisma, but that this was hardly a factor for how he was perceived by his Western following. There, his charisma was primarily the result of careful staging supported by a whole organization. Schnabel observed that among his Western students, Rawat appeared to stimulate an uncritical attitude, giving them an opportunity to project their fantasies of divinity onto his person. The divine nature of the guru is a standard element of Eastern religion, but removed from its cultural context, and confounded with the Western understanding of God as a father, what is lost is the difference between the guru's person and that which the guru symbolizes. The result is limitless personality worship. Schnabel observed that this kind of understanding of the master-disciple relationship, alien to the original Eastern guru-disciple context, often ends in disillusionment for the disciple, who finds that the teacher in the end fails to live up to his or her expectations.

External links

Media/Press

• Panel Urged to Probe Cults, The Washington Post, March 14, 1980
• The Lure of the Cult, Time Magazine, April 7, 1997, refers to "Divine Light Mission", headed by Prem Rawat from 1966-1983.