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I know three types of
longterm premies in the west: 1) those who have a
title or some status in the cult or a paying
position and who have something material to lose by
leaving; 2) those who have reaped some sort of
benefit from K and are still under the impression
that it is connected with M; 3) those who have
seldom meditated but cling to M ''as a talisman to
keep in their pockets'' as Wolfie said.
This last group is the largest. They go to see M
whenever he comes to town but have never gotten
involved in the cult or participated in
synchronized service. They have always distrusted
DLM/EV, instructors and have never given any money.
They mostly still smoke pot and are New Age flakes
or counter-culture crusties. They are also
ironically his most vehement defenders. There are
thousands of them in San Francisco.
I have nothing to say to them or to the first
group of career cultists. But I am friends with
many premies who enjoy K yet still attribute its
effectivness to M. These are the people who are
bankrolling the cult with their modest but regular
donations and who are keeping the local video
programs going. They also do not like EV but send
money to M to help spread peace and love.
Most of these people are good, kind, loving and
generous. These are probably the main market
targeted by the satellite broadcasts. They are not
on the whole a deep-thinking bunch and have a
sentimental and nostalgic attachment to M. There
are about 5,000 in USA and a similar number in
Europe.
I am now in the process of trying to gently tell
these friends that they are trapped in a cult which
has robbed them of their moral integrity,
intellectual independence and emotional maturity.
So here goes. Sorry fellas, I feel a sermon coming
on.
The question I am most frequently asked by my
longterm premie friends is: ''Are you sure K works
without M, ie...the master?''
That is nearly always the first question posed
to me in response to my telling them that I have
decided to walk away from Guru Prempal Rawat for
good. I left him a couple of times before but had
never really gotten him completely out of my
system. This time I have because it is a decision
based on practicality and not emotion as was the
case the other two times that I turned against him.
This time my friends cannot say to me that I am
just upset because they can see I am not. I am
simply finished with guru worship.
This is my answer to my friends as well as other
premies whom I know in South Africa, Britain,
Australia, Germany, El Salvador and the US. I hope
some of you are reading this because I don't have
all your email addresses.
Us longterm premies stuck it out so long because
we enjoy the love and peace which we feel in
meditation. Devotion to M seems to be very much
part of this as supposedly a fondness for the guru
makes practice light and easy and puts you in touch
with your feelings of selfless love. As Rawat
Senior said: ''Knowledge without love is dry and
love without Knowledge is blind.'' Affection for
the guru is the whole point of Rawatism. M has
never been a meditation teacher. He has always been
peddling bhakti-guruism. I knew that from the
beginning and tolerated the messianic megalomania
as Hindu hyperbole. I also knew I was in a cult but
I rationalized it so I can't be angry.
Most of us longterm premies originally got our
jollies from satsang and darshan in the first ten
years. Meditation was often a struggle and our
lives were a rollercoaster ride of guru bliss
followed by post darshan blues. But eventually
meditation started kicking in and some of us even
finally began to see that we got more staying at
home and doing it on our own than going to M's
events. So why did we stick with Rev Rawat? I stuck
with him and went back to him three times because
of fear and guilt.
This is the way I used to think about it. (I
don't think like this anymore.) The goal of K is to
cease to exist as an individual and merge your
will-power with god - nirvana (no identity, no
ego.) You cannot do this on your own. It must be
done to you otherwise you are still exercising your
will-power. Rawat says this often. ''You are like a
fly caught in a spider web. The more you struggle
to get free the more entangled you become. The
Master comes and gently untangles you and lifts you
out of that web and sets you free.'' (Jokey aside:
what he doesn't mention is that he has to rip your
wings off and leave them stuck in that sticky web
in order to save you.) I believed that, if I left
the guru, I would be trapped in some endless loop
of ego-tripping and self-delusion.
I used to think that god is love and that
selfless love is the way to merge with god. Saints
like Mother Theresa did it through taking care of
the poor. I thought Knowledge was better than that.
Like the old saying: ''Give a man a fish and you
feed him for one day. Teach him how to fish and you
feed him for a lifetime.'' I thought that K was the
answer; that happiness and a reall appreciation for
life was the solution to all the problems in the
world. If everyone had peace of mind then the world
would be at peace and we would all be brothers and
sisters under the benevolent gaze of the
Master.
Now I know there is no benevolent master and no
longer know what K is. I still enjoy meditating but
as a yoga mental health exercise, to relax and
refresh myself, to become clear, strong, patient
and generous and get enough energy to feel goodwill
and warm loving. I also think that this can be
achieved in as many different ways as there are
people.
The four techs are not magical or mystical. I
have often had the sneaking suspicion that other
people don't even need to do it because they are
not as nuts as I am. Most people I know have not
done as many drugs or experimented with as many
weird relationships or done as many crazy things as
I have and are on the whole saner, simpler and more
sensible than I am.
Anyway, the main point of this post is to answer
the question, ''Why did some of us stick it out so
long?'' And the answer is simple: We got something
out of it and attributed it to the CEO of Rawat
Inc. or the ''executive friend of EV'' or ''You
Know Who.''
Each of us has to extract ourselves from the
spider-web of gurujism in our own way and in our
own time. Fear holds some and sentiment holds
others. Yes, I would still like to find the
ultimate love but I won't get my tits in a tangle
about it and I would rather keep my moral
integrity, intellectual independence and emotional
maturity intact and not compromise it by an
association with a seriously flawed person like Rev
Rawat.
But the biggest thing is that gurujism does not
work unless you are totally enamored of your guru
and believe in him and trust and respect him. Well,
I am no longer enamored of the guru and find him
unbelievable and untrustworthy. Since washing that
man right out of my hair, I've been feeling
stronger, happier, more loving and honest and
cleaner than I ever have since cutting the guru out
of my life. I now have so much more fun with
meditation without the fear or guilt that I don't
give a damn whether I find god or immortality.
Gurus are preachers of revivalism yoga. Who the
hell needs preachers? Only those who have no
self-motivation.
So, I don't know what K is or if there is a god
and I don't care. As far as I know K was and is
different things to different people. But I do know
who is Guru Maharaji. He is Prempal Rawat the head
of a money-making religious trip based on fear and
guilt. And I don't hate him. I never knew him and
now have no desire to ever get to know him. And I
don't know if K works without M. I'm not interested
in Rev Strangelove's K anymore and feel fine with
what I've got.
I still treasure love above all else but,
instead of trying to love an imaginary friend, I
now love my real friends and I'll get high with a
little help from them. I've gone back to my old
egalitarian and democratic hippie roots. No more
gods, gurus, lords and masters for me.
And, if my friends think I'm onto something nice
and want to know about it, I'll show them in
private, between consenting adults as it always
should have been. But Rev Rawat would not have made
money being an invisible guru stuck in a House in
Golders Green showing a handful of friends who then
showed their friends etc. So he sent people out to
''propagate.'' Yuk! Sounds like those pods in that
alien movie. That was his first mistake and one
that he can never rectify even if he wanted to
which I doubt because there is a very real
possibility that he thinks he really is the
messiah. Crazy deluded man.
PS I just got this in an email from the Chief
Church Lady of A---.
The message will get through
Edited excerpt, Maharaji in Miami Beach, 8th
May 1998
Wake up in the morning and say, ''Thank you.
Thank you for this life, thank you for this moment,
thank you for letting me be here.''
Don't you worry about who's listening.
Because the one you are thanking is a lot closer to
you than you think.
That which you really want to thank - could
it possibly be put in houses of stone? Not
appropriate. Could it be put in houses of wood? Not
appropriate.
It can only be placed in that one house which
will not burn, where no thief can enter, no bars
are needed, no locks are needed, and that is your
heart.
You can whisper it and you will be heard, it
doesn't have to be loud. You don't even have to
move your lips, the message will get
through.
The fact that it was sent to me to ''remind me
to be grateful'' did not annoy me nearly as much as
the words of Rev Rawat did. Again the absolute
inane blather but blather spiked with a dangerous
and negative and deluded philosophy - the concept
that there is a invisible ghost in ''your heart''
that you can have a conversation with and pray
to.
If I wasn't nuts before I met Rawat I surely had
a good enough reason to go nuts afterwards with
such baloney as having a dual personality stuck in
my body - the inner Maharaji. Actually that
invisible inner M ghost in my machine was not
difficult to exorcise. All I said was ''Out damned
spot'' and it was gone just like the tooth fairy,
Santa and other imaginary beings. Rawat is a
primitive, anachronistic and dangerous airhead.
If I don't push the submit button soon I'll
probably say more than I should. Sorry it's such a
long post. I must have had FV withdrawal
syndrome.
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