Indian Background Index | Bibliography Index
Set the Record Straight
Initiation to Knowledge
Communal Monastic Life
First Steps in DLM's Headquarters
Millennium Fever
Soul Rush
The Rawat's War
Development of DUO
Tale of Horror
A Placebo Called Knowledge
Still experimenting with living the best life
Published in 1978
Download 'Soul Rush' as a text file.
"Sophia has given us a precious story full of candor and humor" - ROBERT MISHLER, former President of the Divine Light Mission.
S. Collier comments on Guru Maharaj Ji's divinity . . .
"In the Divine Light Mission there are two groups of people. There are those who sincerely believe that Guru Maharaj Ji is the Lord of Creation here in the flesh to save the world. And then there are those who know him a little better than that. They relate to him in a more human way . . . to them he is more of a teacher, a guide, a co-conspirator in their personal pursuit of a more heavenly way of life.
"I have always been in this second group of people . . . as charming and wise as Guru Maharaj Ji has seemed to me on occasion, I have never found any basis on which to nominate him Lord.
"Guru Maharaj Ji, though he has never made a definitive statement on his own opinion of his own divinity, generally encourages whatever view is held by the people he is with. Addressing several hundred thousand ecstatic Indian devotees, prepared for his message by a four-thousand-year cultural tradition, he declares, 'I am the source of peace in this world . . . surrender the reins of your life unto me and I will give you salvation.' On national television in the United States he says sheepishly, with his hands folded in his lap, 'I am just a humble servant of God.' "
Here is a reproduction of the last 9 chapters of S. Collier's book. The first 8 chapters are related to her childhood and her life before meeting premies and being introduced to Maharaji's 'Knowledge'. We won't reproduce them here without the author's permission.
PREFACE (Excerpts)
IF, IN 1635, THE TOWN CRIER OF KENT, ENGLAND, HAD INTONED
the message now familiar in our present media-"It is ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"-my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents would have been at a loss. Their son, William Whitridge, had just crossed a great ocean and was trying to make a life on the wild and almost townless shores of America. Two generations later, William's grandchildren were probably equally confounded when their children took up the Stars and Stripes and went off to fight as soldiers against His Majesty's troops. In the eighteen hundreds, young people in my family were on the move again, rolling West in covered wagons.I have pioneer roots. Though there are few physical frontiers left to explore, my parents have preserved this heritage for me through their independent thinking and actions on the frontier of human ideas and expression.
(..........)
But it is not my purpose to write about my family. I want to tell the part of the story which is uniquely mine. Each of them is an individual with his or her own story to tell, or to not tell. I respect their privacy.
(..........)
My book shows that it is possible to get a great deal done, even in your first twenty years. I wanted to prove through the example of my life and the lives of my close friends that the frequently baffling activities of young people in recent years have often been motivated by serious thinking and insight.
(..........)
I have written Soul Rush to set the record straight, not just on why young people join spiritual and political groups, but also to give an inside view of the development of one young person's thinking from 1964 to the present.
CHAPTER 9: Initiation to Knowledge
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