Talk:Prem Rawat/Leader of

Sources that discuss Prem Rawat/ Guru Maharaji as the leader, charismatic leader, or spiritual head of a cult, sect, or new religious movement.

Definitions

Provided to offer context about the various ways in which the term "cult" and "sect" are used, which are being conflated in this list without providing such distinction. See also Cult and Sect.

Melton, J. Gordon (1992). Encyclopedic handbook of cults in America. New York: Garland Pub. ISBN 0-8153-1140-0.

The term "cult" is a pejorative label used to describe certain religious groups outside of the mainstream of Western religion. Exactly which groups should be considered cults is a matter of disagreement amongt researchers in the cult phenomena, and considerable confusion exists. However, three definitions dominate the writings of social scientists, Christian counter-cult ministries, and secular anticultists.

Social scientists tend to be the least pejorative in their use of the term. They divide religious groups into three categories: churches, sects, and cults. "Churches" are the large denominations characterized by their inclusive approach to life and their indentification with the prevailing culture. In the United States, the churchly denominations would include such groups as the Roman Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Church, the United Church of Christ and the Protestant Episcopal Church. Groups that have broken away from the churchly denominations are termed "sects." They tend to follow the denominations in most patterns but are more strict in doctrine and behavioral demands placed upon members and emphasize their separation and distinctiveness from the larger culture (frequently spoken of as a "rejection of worldliness"). Typical sects have disavowed war (Quakers and Mennonites), championed controversial religious experiences (pentecostals), and demanded conformity to detailed codes of dress, personal piety, and moral conduct (the holiness churches). Sects such as the fundamentalist Christian groups have argued for a stringent orthodoxy in the face of the doctrinal latitude allowed in most larger church bodies. More extreme sect bodies have developed patterns and practices which have largely isolated them from even their closest religious neighbors--snake-handling, drinking poison, alternative sexual relationships, unusual forms of dress.

While most sects follow familiar cultural patterns to a large extent "cults" follow an altogether different religious structure, one foreign and alien to the prevalent religious communities. Cults represent a force of religious innovation within a culture. In most cases that innovation comes about by the transplantation of a religion from a different culture by the immigration of some of its members and leaders. Thus during the twentieth century, Hinduism and Buddhism have been transplanted to America. In sociological terms, Hindu and Buddhist groups are, in America, cults. Cults may also come about through religious innovation from within the culture. The Church of Scientology ad the Synanon Church are new religious structures which emerged in American society without any direct foreign antecedents.

When social scientists began their discussion of cults in the 1920s, they were aware of only a few cult groups, well-known groups which they could not fit into their more crucial debates about churches versus sects--theosophy, Christian Science, spiritualism, and the two large Hindu groups: the Vedanta Society and the Self-Realization Fellowship. Elmer Clark's pioneering survey of The Small Sects in America (1949) listed fourteen New Thought bodies and thirteen Esoteric bodies, showing an awareness of some twenty-seven cults (plus a few others such as the black Jews considered in the body of his text).

A second definition of cult arose among Christian polemicists. In the early twentieth century several conservative Evangelical Protestant writers, concerned about the growth of different religions in America, attacked these religions for their deviation from Christian orthodox faith. Among the first of the prominent Christian writers on the subject of cults, Jan Karel Van Baalen described cults as non-Christian religions but included those groups which had their roots in Christianity while denying what he considered its essential teaching. According to VanBaalen, all religions could be divided into two groups, those which ascribe to humans the ability to acomplish their own salvation and those which ascribe that ability to God. The latter group is called Christianity. All other religion fits into the first group. In The Chaos of Cults, which went through numerous editions from its first appearance in 1938, Van Baalen analyzed various non-Christian religions in the light of Christian teachings.

With little change, contemporary Christian counter-cult spokespersons have followed Van Baalen's lead. Cults follow another gospel (Gal.I:I6). They are heretical. They set up their own beliefs in opposition to orthodox faith. As Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, two popular Evangelical writers assert, "A cult is a perversion, a distortion of Biblical Christianity, and, as such, rejects the historical teachings of the Christian Church."

The Christian approach to cults would include every group which has departed from orthodox Christianity (such as the Church of Christ, Scientist, the Latter Day Saints, and the Jehovah's Witnesses) as well as those groups which have never made any claim to be Christian. Individual writers disagree over the cultic nature of such groups as the Roman Catholic Church (included and then dropped by Van Baalen), or the Unitarian-Universalist Church. Little consideration has been given to non-Trinitarian Pentecostal groups.

The third definition, the one which became the dominant force in the public debates on cults in the 1970s, developed within the secular anti-cult movement. The definition has shifted and changed over the last decade. It did not develop out of any objective research on alternative religions, rather it emerged in the intense polemics of parents who had been disturbed by changes observed in their sons and daughters who had joined particular religious groups. These "cults"--predominantly the Children of God, the Church of Armageddon, the Unification Church, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and the Church of Scientology--had, they charged, radically altered the personality traits of their children.

Anti-cultists began to speak of "destructive cults," groups which hypnotized or brainwashed recruits, destroyed their ability to make rational judgments and turned them into slaves of the group's leader. While drawing upon Christian counter-cult literature in the beginning, the secular anti-cultists gradually discarded any overtly religious language as a means of designating cults in order to appeal to government authorities and avoid any seeming attack upon religious liberties.

Various terms

The Divine Light Mission has been described in various and sometimes conflicting terms. It has been called a new religious movement, a cult, a charismatic religious sect, an offshoot of Sant Mat, an alternative religion or spin-off from other traditional religions, a Radhasoami offshoot, an orthodox Sikh community, an Advait Mat related tradition, a proselytizing religion ("Guru-ism"), and a defunct religious movement. A 1998 study of terms used in U.S. newspapers and news magazines, which examined the media's failure to use the more neutral terminology favored by social scientists, found that the Divine Light Mission was referred to as a "sect" in 10.3% of articles, as a "cult" in 24.1%, and as both in 13.8%. It was referred to as a "sect" in 21.4% of headlines, with 0% for "cult".

No date

• Cult culture cultivation: three different tillings of a common plot. book reviews. THEODORE E. LONG, Edited by JEFFREY K. HADDEN, JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION. pp. 419-423
  • It is in his analysis of the microcosmic significance of cults in contemporary culture that Downton's study of the Divine Light Mission (DLM) is most clearly distinguished from Lofland's. This results in part from his interest in the followers of Guru Maharaj Ji rather than the cult group itself.
  • Few of these converts defected, and their disengagement was gradual, with belief in the cult's tenets withering as their social ties to the group atrophied. These sojourns of the soul reveal the personal and cultural logic of cult madness. On the personal side, Downton shows that the conversion process is a halting, incremental and evolutionary metamorphosis, that conversion is a considered step toward positive goals of self-development, and that it both proceeds from and produces willful action. In that description we find both a strong empirical echo of David Matza's superb analysis of conversion in Becoming Deviant and a convincing counterpoint to popular notions of cult conversions as sudden, irrational, coercive events which numb the mind and will. Culturally, Downton elaborates the connection between cults and America's traumas of the late sixties and early seventies, especially the intriguing symbiosis of the psychedelic subculture and cultic religion. His findings support the conclusions that drugs alienated youth from established culture and that cults were agents of resocialization. But he also demonstrates that drugs turned youth toward the sacred and that cults were the heirs, not the conquerors, of that rebellious experimentation.

• Old Wine in Exotic New Bottles. Book review of The New Religious Consciousness. THOMAS ROBBINS pp. 310-313
  • In contrast, Jeanne Messer (Chapter 3) reports that devotees of Guru Maharaj-ji evince "an increasing willingness to rejoin the mainstream of society." Messer also emphasizes the heterogeneity of cognitive orientations within the movement and the absence of standardized doctrine and fixed moral codes. Her account converges with recent conceptualizations of "cult" patterns by Allan Eister, G. K. Nelson, and Roy Wallis and also serves to remind us that there are "religions" in which cognitive belief is secondary, such that the commitment of devotees is essentially experiential and "beyond belief."

1972

News

• India Investigating Religious Movement By YRON L. BELKIND Associated Press Writer NEW DELHI (AP) 12-A THE ABILENE REPORTER-NEWS 11/14/1972
  • Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government is investigating a religious movement headed by a guru claiming to be 14 years old who is India's latest spiritual export to the West, authoritative sources said Monday.

• Chubby Cherub Hottest Guru on Circuit By LEON DANIEL HARDWAR, India (UPI) December 10, 1972 THE TIMES-STANDARD
  • Maharaj Ji took over at the age of 8 as "Perfect Master" when his father died. He said a voice came to him saying, "You are He. You are to continue." Maharaj Ji said lie did not want to become the head guru and would have preferred to be "a mischievous little hoy." But he could not deny his duty and at his father's funeral he told the mourners to slop weeping.

1973

News

• The Mini Guru By J. KING CRU February 3, 1973 THE STARS AND STRIPES Page 9
  • Maharaj Ji, the teen-age guru who heads the Divine Light Mission, is billed by his followers as "a fully realized soul of our time — a born saint." ... Upon the death of his father, the guru, then 8, took over the Divine Light movement.

• "The guru who minds his mother", By MALCOLM N. CARTER, AP. 11/4/73 Stars and Stripes
  • Playful and pontifical, the guru is a spiritual leader, a pudgy adolescent with a fondness for sweets, and a business titan whose mushrooming missionary corporation includes such diverse activities as film production, education and the Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness janitorial service. ... Titled corporate "supreme executive" and spiritual "perlect master," the boy enjoys the benefits of both, and suffers the consequences. With status go worldly stresses and worldly goods — a middle-aged executive's ulcer, three luxury cars and as many elegant homes. ... A guru since his father's death seven years ago, this plump teen-ager strides commandingly about the mission's headquarters here. His eyes dart darkly across the heads dipping obeisance in his path. He is a lion among cubs, giving advice with apparent assurance and conceding devotion with barely a nod.

• • "Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?", ask the posters. The answer to this, or any other question, is never given in specific terms. If it were, the whole point would be lost, for the message of his cult is that all such specific questions are unanswerable, unimportant, only more ephemeral trivia in the "dream" or the "game" that we call everyday life. ... He is an incredibly rich Indian prince, the pudgy heir to leadership of one of his country's counties, mystical sects, whose privileged caste has felt none of the sting of a century of colonialism. Gurus are a dime a dozen in India, and Maharaj Ji's cult was in death throes when he devised a brilliant scheme: he would diversify and expand abroad! ... Looking at the cult from this perspective, the picture emerges of the sickness feeding on itself: there is a logical symbiosis that sustains both the Guru and his followers: Americans want their self-respect; the Guru wants to make a buck. ... The cult of the Guru, however, was presented as more than simply another mystical cult. No, the child-god has something much more to offer the Pepsi generation; a Puritanical alternative to "counter-culture" life-style (celibacy is required), and a "peace movement that will save the world." ... However, we soon realized that the extent of the premies' "Knowledge" of the cult was how to give Satsang ("once you taste of this precious Knowledge you will understand why everything we need just comes to us - it's the energy force of Guru Maharaj Ji," etc., etc.).
• The authoritarian structure of the organization is really no different from any other corporation, and worse in many ways, because it extends to every facet of everyday life: from the clothes you wear (suits for men, long dresses for women), to your sex life (or in this case, the prohibition thereof). The Guru is daddy, the premies are his children, and all the authoritarianism implied in that structure is present, only worse, since the daddy is also god and never makes a mistake. Mindlessness is the goal for premies to strive for. As Rennie put it in an interview with Ken Kelley, "I just surrendered my mind completely to Guru Maharaj Ji and said 'No more - from here on out you do the thinking and I'll do the listening.' "

• Rawson, Jonathon (November 17, 1973), "God in Houston: The Cult of Guru Maharaji Ji", The New Republic: 17
  • "Receiving Knowledge" is the key to everything in the Divine Light Mission, which is the organization headed by Guru Maharaj Ji, and the first step is to attend satsang, a sort of revival meeting in which premies give testimonies.

1974

Current Year Biography

• Moritz, Charles, ed. Current Year Biography, 1974
  • MAHARAj JI, GURU .... Indian spiritual leader

1975

News

• The teenaged guru fights his brother for control of the wealthy divine light mission. PEOPLE June 16, 1975, pp. 28-30
  • As it happened, the picture had been planted by the guru's older brother and rival, Bal Bhagwanji, in their latest skirmish for control of the Divine Light Mission. ... In 1973, with the help of American advisors, Maharaj Ji took over control of the U.S. empire, straining family ties. ... She declared that she was turning over the spiritual leadership of the Mission to her older son, Bal Bhagwanji. ... Finally the unhappy guru returned to the U.S., but not before he and 40 disciples stormed the New Delhi premises of the Divine Light Mission in protest and occupied it for 30 minutes. ....

• The New Messiahs attract youthful converts VICTORIA GRAHAM Associated Press Writer Dec. 22, 1973
  • DIVINE LIGHT MISSION: The Divine Light Mission is an Indian sect led by Guru Maharaj Ji, a plump, high-living 17-year-old compared by his followers with Jesus, Buddha and Krishna.

• CIA Led Guru Astray, Sect Official Charges, WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, MONDAY, APRIL 7, 1975
  • Maharaj Ji was named by his mother to take over the Divine Light Mission following the death of his father in 1966.

• Guru squabble, May 25, 1975, INKPENDENT PRESS-TELEGRAM, Long Beach, CA A.2
  • Indian Guru Maharaj Ji, still squabbling with his family, said Saturda in New Delhi his late father was the only person who could remove him from leadership of the Divine Light Mission.

• "Ji, But Ifs Great to Be Me..." Pacific Stars & Stripes 5 Wednesday, June 18, 1975
  • The guru, whose position as leader of the Divine Light Mission was, challenged by his mother after he married his American secretary and bought a Malibu mansion, hosted about 1,000 of his West Coast followers who flew in Sunday on less than- 24 hours notice for the occasion.

Robbins, et al.

• Youth Culture Religious Movements: Evaluating the Integrative Hypothesis. Author(s): Thomas Robbins, Dick Anthony, Thomas Curtis Source: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1, (Winter, 1975), pp. 48-64
  • There also are ambiguities with respect to the integrative functions of eastern mystical cults. The well-known Hare Krishna cult appears to be a strictly disciplined monastic order, many of whose members are segregated in temples which totally organize their lives, although there are "householders" who live outside the temple and hold conventional jobs (Snelling and Whitley, 1972). The Divine Light Mission of the Guru Maharaj-ji has been analyzed by one writer as a convenient way for middle class dropouts to return to respectability and rationalize their resumption of class privileges (McAfee, 1973), while another writer depicts the same movement as an ominous locus of thought control whose fanatically devoted members are prompted to commit acts of extreme violence and illegality (Kelley, 1974).
    • Kelley, K. 1974 "Get your red-hot panaceasl" New York Times, op.-ed. page (January 19).
    • McAfee, K. 1973 "Blissing out: the devine light (or divine hype?) of the fifteen-year-old Guru Ma- haraj-ji." University Review (May).

1976

Messer

• 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.
  • "Guru Maharaj Ji is most easily described as a boy guru, successor to his father's disciples"
  • "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."

Psychological Reports (journal)

• Psychological Reports, v.39.3 - Missoula- p.976
  • "The Divine Light Mission is a new religious movement headed by the Guru Maharaj Ji"

1977

Mangalwadi

• Mangalwadi, Vishal. The World of Gurus. 1987 First Edition by Vikas Publishing House in 1977 Revised Edition
  • The spectacular rise and the scandalous fall of the Divine Light Mission has made it the most publicized sect of our day. Its recently dethroned leader, Balyogeshwar alias Guru Maharaj Ji, was claimed to be "the brightest event in the history of the planet" by Rennie Davis, a leading American revolutionary of the sixties, who later became a devotee of Guru Maharaj Ji. Balyogeshwar's father, the founder of the Mission, had declared him to be the "born saint," his mother, the patron of the Mission, and Bal Bhagavan his oldest brother and the new leader of the Mission, called him "Perfect Master." Like Sai Baba, Balyogeshwar claimed that he was Jesus Christ come again and Krishna reincarnated. Millions believed him and surrendered their minds to him. They testified that he had given them the experience of divinity. But now this brilliant star has turned out to be a meteor that flashed across gurudom only to fizzle out into darkness.
  • Generally in the tradition of Sant Mat, guruship is hereditary or at least confined to the family. Shri Hans Ji Maharaj married Rajeshwari Devi because his first wife did not bear him a son. Mataji and he had four sons; all were claimed to be divine but the youngest was the "born saint," therefore the "Perfect Master." Rajeshwari Devi became the "divine mother" but the first wife who lives in Dehra Dun had no place in the Mission. Balyogeshwar became the leader of the sect after his father's death on July 19, 1966.
  • On August 1, 1966, when he was eight years old, he declared himself to be the "Perfect Master." To the thousands of devotees present at his father's funeral, he said, "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." Awed at this declaration, his mother, brothers and mahatmas (apostles) present, prostrated themselves at his feet and received his blessings.
  • The cracks within the "divine family" became impossible to cement after Balyogeshwar issued directives that the photographs of his mother were to be removed from all the centres since she was no longer divine, and in their place were to be put the photographs of his wife who was "the incarnation of the goddess Durga." This precipitated a situation because of which his mother, the patron of the Mission had to remove him from the leadership of the Mission and enthrone his eldest brother Bal Bhagavan in his place.
  • Balyogeshwar and his Western followers, however, described his mother's step as "ridiculous," since he had taken over the complete management of the Mission on his 16th birthday in December 1973 in accordance with the will of his divine father. Mr Joe Anctil, Balyogeshwar's Press Secretary, defended the Perfect Master on the grounds that he is not following any traditions or Indian concepts and so cannot be bound by Indian social taboos. Mr. Anctil argued "Maharaj Ji does not say what to eat, drink or smoke. He wants to change the hearts of men and not their habits." Besides, he argued, when Balyogeshwar's mother was in the U.S.A., "she lived exactly the (same) life-style,"' and Balyogeshwar had to remove her from the Mission because she "had mismanaged the Mission which caused us to be in debt at the time."
  • After Bal Bhagavan was declared to be the leader of the Mission, Balyogeshwar levelled serious charges against his brother's character, too, for which he was taken to court. The particular case was withdrawn because this "battle of bhagavans (gods)" made the entire "divine family" a laughing stock in the world. But the legal battle for ownership of the property in the West has continued.

Stoner & Parke

• All Gods Children: The Cult Experience - Salvation Or Slavery? by CARROL STONER AND JO ANNE PARKE[2]
  • The New Religions ... Why Now? p. 36
  • 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.
  • 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.

1978

News

• UPI (November 25, 1978), ""Maharaj Ji has Jones-like traits"", Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria): A-3
  • DENVER (UPI) — Two former top lieutenants of the Guru Maharaj Ji'sDivine Light Mission have warned the estimated 15,000 American followers of the 19-year-old spiritual leader they risk a plight similar to that of devotees of the Rev. Jim Jones in Guyana. Robert Mishler, who served as Maharaj Ji's personal secretary and president of the Mission for six years and John Hand Jr., former vice president of the organization, Friday said the guru had displayed behavior patterns similar to those of Jones. "AFTER SEEING the similarities of behavior of Jones are so strikingly like Maharaj i's, it's possible something like what happened in Guyana could come about as a result of him being threatened," Hand said.
    • The two former Mission officials said Maharaj Ji's private behavior included physical and sexual assaults on followers by stripping them, pouring abrasive chemical on their bodies, administering psychotropic drugs and having them beaten with sticks or thrown into swimming pools.

Collier

• Collier, Sophia (1978). Soul rush : the odyssey of a young woman of the '70s, 1st ed., New York: Morrow. ISBN 9780688032760.
  • [Organization chart produced by Michael Dettmer with Guru Maharaj Ji at the top, with Bob Mishler, Dettmer and Lous Schwartz below.]

Foss and Larkin

• Foss, Daniel A.; Larkin, Ralph W. (Summer, 1978), "Worshiping the Absurd: The Negation of Social Causality among the Followers of Guru Maharaj Ji", Sociological Analysis 39 (2): 157–164, doi:10.2307/3710215
  • 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 Maharaji 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 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.
  • Abrupt changes in Mission policy apparently due to decisions of Guru Maharaj Ji or other members of the Holy family were also defined as lila by premies in the provinces. ... We asked whether different members of the Holy Family represented divergent policy positions within the Mission. The housemother pointed out that members of the Holy Family could do whatever they pleased because "they're not human," and therefore speculation about their possible motives was entirely futile and presumptuous.

Pilarzyk

• Pilarzyk, Thomas The Origin, Development, and Decline of a Youth Culture Religion: An Application of Sectarianization Theory Review of Religious Research, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Autumn, 1978), pp. 23-43.
  • In this paper Wallis' theory of sectarianization is applied to data collected on the Divine Light Mission, a contemporary cultic movement of the American youth culture. **Greater significance lies with the response by the DLM's most immediate environment, the youth culture which acts as the movement's "cultic milieu." The great majority of the Divine Light Mission's membership has been recruited from the youth culture. The American youth culture is, among other things, a conglomeration of spiritual groups which includes Jesus Freaks, satanic cult worshippers, zen mystics, chic astrologers, guru followers, and other spiritualists. With the establishment of such esoteric "subuniverses of meaning," a variety of perspectives on the youth culture religions have emerged, each viewing the others from the angle of its own belief system. Consequently, the youth culture varies in its responses to the different groups, from minimal and covert toward cultic movements to the overt and aggressive responses toward such sects as the Jesus and Hare Krsna movements. The esoteric ways of some sects generate a more negative and overt response from their immediate youth culture milieu than do the less threatening belief systems of cults.
  • Since its inception, the Divine Light Mission has been decidedly cultic in Wallis' terms. The importance of the mystical experience, the few loosely-structured rules and regulations, democratic decision-making processes, the lack of doctrinal sophistication or scriptural finesse, and weak group boundaries and social control mechanisms represent a cultic form of group life at its ashrams. In addition, the movement, like most cults, remains basically integrative: it offers its large peripheral, non-communal milieu a meditative means by which to deal with and strive for institutionalized goals through traditional occupations. The DLM has functioned to reintegate alienated individuals into the mainstream of the wider society. Such "integrative movements" (see Robbins, 1969) with a large constituency of cultic followers commonly have rather inclusive social structures.
  • The Divine Light Mission originated in America as a number of geographically dispersed local cults. In May of 1971, the first five American "premies" or followers of guru Maharaj Ji who received his mystical knowledge in India returned to the United States to proselytize immediately prior to the guru's first visit to America in July of that year.
  • In addition to showing interest in proselytization and its image as a religious movement of the youth culture, the Divine Light Mission also began to concern itself with its "corporate image" as a way of attracting financial and membership support. The movement headquarters in some larger cities moved to offices in large downtown buildings. In addition, by April, 1973, the Divine United Organization (DUO) was established as the financial arm of the movement. While guru Maharaj Ji began to participate in the development of the movement's publications, most major organizational decisions were still made by the premies at the Denver headquarters in conjunction with the guru's older family members. The distribution of power and authority in the movement in the early 1970s was officially and symbolically based upon the somewhat ambiguous charismatic appeal of guru Maharaj Ji. Many "rank and file" followers were uncertain about his position in the whole organizational scheme of the movement as well as the claim that he was the only true spiritual master. Devotion to him allegedly was based in his ability to inspire a connection between himself and the "spiritual energy" or "divine light" experienced in meditation. This connection was capable of motivating premies to exclusive obedience to the guru. Leaders within the organization more commonly gained their positions through special dedication to Maharaj Ji, the meditation or his family as well as through organizational skills and talents based upon past experience.
  • As the DLM's corporate president noted in the movement newspaper in the summer of 1974, "the debt (incurred by the Millennium festival) taught us a great deal about developing a stable foundation for our communities. Today we are on the most stable financial basis we've been on at any other time." Continued cutbacks on propagation and capital spent to promote a corporate image allegedly helped to place the movement "back on its economic feet." Many of these developments were concurrent with guru Maharaj Ji's growing influence on organizational decision making.
  • Growing stabilization as a centralized cult was short-lived. Increased intervention by guru Maharaj Ji in the internal affairs of the American DLM led to friction, dissension, and the rapid decline of the movement. Decision-making and the establishment of movement direction were previously in the hands of the holy family and their premie administrators in Denver. By the summer of 1974, the guru began to institute important changes which support Wallis' (1974: 327) contention that the failure to cope with institutional fragility commonly results in movement decline. Since failure to cope with this fragility tend to result in a loss of their distinctive authority, reabsorption of their doctrine into the cultic milieu, and the disappearance of their following, [cultic leaders] have little to lose and everything to gain by attempting to implement strategies of sectarianization, which their greater prestige within the movement is more like1y to render successful. Maharaj Ji did indeed implement strategies to insure greater sectarianism. First, measures were taken to tighten restrictions of ashram life, to handle increasing membership dissension and "spiritual loafing," and to redefine the appropriate premie lifestyle. Second, the guru reiterated his importance as the only true spiritual master of the movement in the face of growing conflict with the holy family. And third, he initiated the internationalization of the movement, which demanded a broadening of its financial support base in the United States. All three measures contributed to yet another attempt to establish "a new social order." Let us examine each of these changes.
  • First, in the face of growing internal dissension at the grass-root and leadership levels, guru Maharaj Ji delivered a "shape up or ship out" lecture which called for DLM premies in all ashrams to either decide "for or against the mystical knowledge." He stressed that the dedicated premie must believe in the importance of the meditative experience and proselytize. The guru reminded premies of his self-importance as the only authoritative link between themselves and the spiritual knowledge. This re-emphasis upon the aims and purpose of the premie lifestyle also led to a more careful screening of ashram membership and to the anticipation of formalized vows to differentiate between degrees of commitment to the movement. In addition, "knowledge classes" were started for novitiates at thc larger ashrams in order to accommodate the increased amount of time and preparation needed for receiving the mystical knowledge.
  • The guru's concern for centralization of his power and authority over the American movement was evident in shifts in movement activities. For example, he ordered a new approach to the magazine And It Is Divine, shifting toward a more "premie-oriented magazine." Also, specific semi-codified rules and regulations (e.g., special religious vows) were instituted early in 1974 for the regulation of local ashram-living. Similarly, daily schedules became increasingly standardized on a 24-hour basis. **This rather subtle break with his traditional Hindu image, in retrospect, was another indication of a growing estrangement between the guru and his more traditional Hindu "holy family," who with Maharaj Ji still collectively formed the DLM's international leadership hierarchy.
  • A third strategy which failed to move the DLM toward greater sectarianization after his marriage, leadership conflict, and the massive membership exodus was the guru's attempt in late 1974 to internationalize the movement.
  • The DLM was able to negotiate such a process in developing from a series of small local cults to the centralized cult, concurrent with its spiritual leader's increasing activities as institutional head.
  • Third, Maharaj Ji's increasingly assertive actions as institutional leader and the impending dissension and conflict also support Wallis' sectarianization theory.

1979

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 "ludicrous," 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 information 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.

Downton

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

• Describes PR in many terms, including "Guru", "Perfect Master". No other terming used.

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.

Price

• Price, Maeve (1979): The Divine Light Mission as a social organization. (1) Sociological Review, 27, Page 279-296
  • It is proposed that without organization DLM remains an amorphous constituent of the 'cultic milieu'. (4) Whereas with organization it is moving towards the status of a sect. Given the problematic status of the concepts 'cult, and 'sect' it is necessary to select a working definition for the purpose of this discussion. The term 'sect' is employed, following Roy Wallis's example to refer to a religious collectivity whose central characteristic is 'epistemological authoritarianism' rather than an 'epistemological individualism' which characterizes a 'cult' . (5) Without doubt the beliefs of members of DLM (known as premies) derive from the dictates of their leader, indeed the knowledge they possess is his knowledge, though many adherents hold a more idiosyncratic position, accepting only parts of the belief system and choosing the degree to which they conform to accepted practice. This strain towards 'epistemological individualism' may be one of the reasons why DLM has not achieved full sect status. However, whilst there are cultic tendencies in DLM, further useful implications follow Wallis's distinction, all of which tend to strengthen the sect's ability to cope with survival problems: the vague boundaries of the cult are clarified by an absolute distinction between those who belong and those who do not; there is a finite membership; and, moreover, far from the belief system suffering from vagueness of definition, 'sects lay claim to possess unique and privileged access to the truth or salvation'. (6) It is because DLM conforms to the definition outlined above that DLM is regarded as a religious sect.
  • The kind of organization, however, which emerges will depend on a number of constraints which limit the scope of a leader's prescriptions. It is the thesis of this paper that the Divine Light Mission as a social organization is a product of a number of analytically distinct sets of forces which impinge on any 'ideal' structure which the leader might devise. It cannot be stated, as Wallis claimed of the Children of God, that 'the development of the movement as a social structure has been altogether defined and directed by the leader's specification. . .' (7) Judging from what the leader of DLM has declared to his followers it is clear that he would like the mission to function without any formal organisation at all. (8) At the same time, in order to spread his message and retain and expand his following he has had to accept the necessity of organization. Nevertheless it does not follow that the leader has either a clear definition of the type of organization he desires or that he possesses the requisite skills to achieve his goals. In particular, the leader has to take into account the social characteristics of his following who will also have attitudes concerning the existence of end form of organization. Nevertheless it does not follow that the leader has determine events and is frequently having to respond to situations which he could not have deliberately planned. This is particularly the case where the mission's financial problems are concerned. Other social forces, too, restrict the freedom of the leader to manipulate the movement as he might wish.
  • The actual formal organization of DLM was set up in Britain in 1971 and it was registered as a charity with Mata Ji acting as regent for her son, Maharaj Ji, who was still a minor, and with half English and half Indian premies on the board of directors. In the early days Mata Ji was unquestionably the power behind the throne. She was supported by her three other sons, who were all senior to Maharaj Ji, and by a number of Indian mahatmas who helped to organize the mission in the West. Among these was Ashokanand who was the main organizing force in Britain. It was he, together with self-selected leading British premies, nearly all with University backgrounds, (10) who tried to get the mission firmly established, organize the ashrams as examples of spiritual living for all premies and seekers and set about the task of proselytizing the vast numbers of potential recruits.
  • During the next two-year phase of recession a number of events occurred which contributed to the weakening of the mission in terms of loss of members and decline in recruitment. (14) The most significant of these events were the marriage of Guru Maharaj Ji, in May 1974, and the subsequent 'Holy Family Row' when a struggle for control took place between Mata Ji, supported by her eldest son, and Guru Maharaj Ji, supported by his Western devotees as well as by a strong following in India. Details of this struggle are discussed below to illustrate the degree of competence Maharaj Ji displayed as a leader. At this point it is sufficient to state that Maharaj Ji emerged as the acknowledged leader and satguru with, ostensibly, complete control over the mission in Britain and elsewhere outside India.
  • When Maharaj Ji announced that he was dissolving the formal side of the organization, as he did at Frankfurt in 1976 (23) this could be interpreted as a response to premies' resistance to bureaucratic structures. However, a consequence of having only a skeletal formal organizational structure is that recruitment suffers and the active, evangelical energies of the movement are frustrated. Another interpretation is put upon Maharaj Ji's action in the next section of this paper.
  • Whatever the decisive factors in the struggle for power, it is apparent that the break came soon after Maharaj Ji's marriage and though Mata Ji attempted to appoint the eldest brother, Bhagwan Ji, as the new Perfect Master, or Satguru, the western premies never withdrew their loyalty from Maharaj Ji. In Britain a long wrangle ensued over the legal control of DLM as Maharaj Ji was not yet of age, but Mata Ji was out-manoevred by Maharaj Ji's supporters who by-passed the officially registered Divine Light Mission and used Divine United Organization (DUO) (which had already been established in 1973 to co-ordinate the mission's activities) and this became the mission's operational headquarters. The most important outcome of the 'Holy Family Row' was the establishment of Guru Maharaj Ji as the sole head of DLM, as an international religious organization, with its headquarters remaining in the United States. Once Maharaj Ji became the de facto head of the mission, various factors, which must include his own inexperience and lack of long-term policy and his anxiety not to become a puppet of his officials, led to a gradual slowing down of recruitment, a falling away of active support and an almost complete cessation of organized proselytizing activities.
  • At the conference in Frankfurt in November I976, Maharaj Ji had announced that the International Headquarters were dissolved and that henceforth he would guide the mission, with his brother, Raja Ii, as his ambassador. In fact what had occurred was the removal from power of his closest adviser, who had been the International President since the headquarters were set up in the United States. It is apparent that Maharaj Ji resented the advice given to him by his chief subordinate and dismissed him when a clash of wills occurred. (28) The dismantling of the International Headquarters did not in fact take place, although staff numbers were greatly reduced, at the national level as well, and officials are very cautious now, afraid to take initiative while they try to guess what it is their Guru really intends.

1980

Rudin & Rudin

• Rudin, James A. & Marcia R. Prison or Paradise?: The New Religious Cults. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980, ISBN 080060637X, p. 63-65
  • There is frequently an aura of violence or potential violence. ... The Divine Light Mission premises and the Krishnas at their farm in West Virginia have their own security forces which they insist are necessary to protect the cult leaders or to protect themselves from hostile neighbors.
  • The short, rotund, noncharismatic Indian guru, whose real name is Prem Pal Singh Rawat, seems an unlikely figure to inspire such passionate commitment. But when his father, the wealthy and high-born Shri Hans Ji, who had preached among India's poor since 1960, died, the eight-year-old boy was already widely known for his unusual spiritual qualities. His mother chose him over three older brothers to continue her husband's successful Divine Light Mission.

Unesco

• Current Sociology, Unesco, International Sociological Association, em notes: v.28-29 ((1980-81)
  • A third group of new religious movements [includes] the Divine Light Mission of Maharaj Ji

News

• Woman may give abducted daughter to court for care. THE NEW MEXICAN Santa Fe, N.M., Frl., Oct. 31, 1980 B-4
  • Gillmore, 29, was charged in Boise with second-degree kidnapping after she failed to return Alysia to her ex-husband, Michael Clary, who has custody and a Nebraska court order for the child's return. She said the girl's father has ties to the Divine Light Mission, a controversial Florida-based sect led by 22-year-old Marahaj Ji, that could harm the child.

1981

News

• "1-Year Trial OKd for Sect's Helipad" Los Angeles Times May 22, 1981; pg. F6
  • The county Board of Supervisors Thursday approved a one-year trial for a controversial helipad at the Malibu estate of Maharaj Ji, spiritual head of the Divine Light Mission sect.

Baker

• OF GODS AND MEN NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN THE WEST Proceedings of the 1981 Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association Sociology of Religion Study Group Eileen Barker editor ISBN 0-86554-095-0 Copyright © 1983
  • The term "cult" is probably the most widely used expression in everyday English for referring to new religious movements which have been at the center of controversies in the West for the past decade or so. The best-known movements include the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Children of God (now the Family of Love), and the Divine Light Mission. There are enormous differences among them, but for the purpose of understanding the public response to new religious movements it is essential to preserve the sense of a perceived unity.
• SUBGROUPS IN DIVINE LIGHT MISSION MEMBERSHIP: A COMMENT ON DOWNTON. by Frans Derks and Ian M. van der Lans
  • 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.
  • They came to see Guru Maharaj Ji and their relationship with him as a source of continuous religious experience. This made Guru Maharaj Ji much more important for them than he had been for the pre-1975 members.

1982

Baker

• Barker, Eileen (1982). New religious movements: a perspective for understanding society. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. pp. p.338. ISBN 0-88946-864-8. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • "New Religious Movement"

Bromley & Shupe

• Bromley, David G. and Anson D. Shupe, Jr. Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare Beacon Press, Boston 1982
  • It is fair to conclude that Maharaj Ji comes closest to fitting the anticultists' stereotype of a leader living in luxury at the expense of his followers. p.137

Larson

• Larson, Bob, Book of Cults, 1982,
  • In the early seventies Guru Maharaj ji commanded one of the largest and fastest-growing followings of all imported cult leaders. At one time he confidently declared, "The key to the whole life, the key to the existence of this entire universe rests in the hands of Guru Maharaj Ji." p. 205
  • But before any final obituaries on Guru Maharaj Ji are pronounced, it would be wise to ponder the teachings and practices that precipitated his sudden rise to power. In the seeds of his fame may be the genesis of other cult leaders having an Eastern inclination, Understanding what the DLM taught and represented may give a clue forewarning society of other personality cult figures. p 208.

News

• Brown, Chip, "Parents Versus Cult: Frustration, Kidnapping, Tears; Who Became Kidnappers to Rescue Daughter From Her Guru", The Washington Post, February 15, 1982
  • Suddenly there were new reports from people who'd actually managed the Divine Light Mission—Robert Mishler, the man who organized the business side of the mission and served for 5 1/2 years as its president, and Robert Hand Jr., who served as a vice president for two years. In the aftermath of Jonestown, Mishler and Hand felt compelled to warn of similarities between Guru Maharaj Ji and Jim Jones. They claimed the potential for another Jonestown existed in the Divine Light Mission because the most fanatic followers of Maharaj Ji would not question even the craziest commands. As Jim Jones convincingly demonstrated, the health of a cult group can depend on the stability of the leader.
    Mishler and Hand revealed aspects of life inside the mission that frightened the Deitzes. In addition to his ulcer, the Perfect Master who held the secret to peace and spiritual happiness 'had tremendous problems of anxiety which he combatted with alcohol,' Mishler said in a Denver radio interview in February 1979.

• • DENVER (AP) - Lawyers for a woman who allegedly was abducted here one year ago in an attempt by her parents to break her ties with a religious sect are fighting to have her found incompetent to testify about the incident. Lawyers for Emily Deitz, a follower of the Guru Maharaj Ji — who heads the Divine Light Mission — claim the sect has control over her mind and has eliminated her ability to think for herself. ... Denver Deputy District Attorney Beth McCann said Ms. Dietz, who lives in the Denver area, occasionally goes to hear the Majaraj Ji speak but isn't living with a group of followers. The cult, Ms. McCann says, doesn't have control over Ms.Dietz's mind.

1983

Lefebure et all

• Lefebure, Marcus; Baum, Gregory; Coleman, John Aloysius (1983). New religious movements. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. pp. p.19. ISBN 0-8164-2441-1. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • The 19960's and 1970's saw the rise and someetimes fall, of a numbers of movements centered on particular Hindu gurus who ventured West. One of the most celebrated was the Divine Light Mission of the teenager Guru Maharaj Ji"

• MacDougall, Curtis D. SUPERSTITION AND THE PRESS ©1983 Prometheus Books, 700 East Amherst Street, Buffalo, NY 14215. ISBN: 0-87975-211-4
  • When at the age of 8 he succeeded his father as head

of the Divine Light Mission, he became known as both Balyogeshwas (child god) and Shri Guru Maharaj Ji.

• • Feb. 26, 1979 Virginia Culver reported that Marahaj Ji spoke to 8,000 followers in the Denver Coliseum. There was much music and gift giving. The guru told the audience he could give all knowledge leading to "perfectness," but not unless they "open up to let in the knowledge and surrender confusion." Another dissenter received almost a full page in Virginia Culver's article in the Denver Post for March 2, 1979. He is Ron Isaacks who said, "Instead of being the liberating experience I had joined to have, I ended up feeling quite limited, held seemingly helpless by the fear of leaving . . . I decided to leave the cult because I noticed dangerous similarities to the Jim Jones cult in Guyana." March 7, 1979 Virginia Culver reported that the cult was moving its national headquarters from Denver to Miami because of the latter place's accessibility to overseas flights.
  • Dec. 2, 1979 Marahaj Ji, who lived with his family in Malibu, Calif., was reported as intending to ignore the attacks on him. Dec. 15,1979 in a half-page feature by Virginia Culver, the DenverPost's religion editor, the sect's public relations man, Joe Anctil, said the guru's mission was "peace and love" and he "has no intention of getting in fights with critics or wasting time in court battles with every crackpot that comes along." Anctil said the cult has 1.2 million members in 59 countries-15,000 in the United States.
  • To obtain the right to have their own religious services within the Denver county jail, two members of the Divine Light Mission brought suit in U.S. District court in Denver, Brad Martisius reported for the Denver Post of Feb. 25, Settlement of the case whereby the inmates won the right was reported Sept. 3, 1981 by agreement, whereupon the two dropped their suit.

1986

Khalsa

• Khalsa, Kirpal Singh, New Religious Movements Turn to Worldly Success (1986) p.244-255, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 25, No. 2, (Jun., 1986), Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
  • a "charismatic leader"
  • Our research focused on three groups active in the United States: 1) 3HO Foundation, a yogic/Sikh tradition headed by Yogi Bhajan; 2) Divine Light Mission, an Indian devotational group headed by Guru Maharaj Ji; and 3) Vajradhatu, a Tibetan Buddhist organization headed by Trungpa Rinpoche.
  • The directors no longer promote Guru Maharaj Ji as "Lord of the Universe," although they will privately acknowledge him as such.
  • Tension between spiritual and secular activities is a distinguishing characteristic of a sect ideal-type. Accordingly, DLM can be fairly accurately analyzed using a sect-church typology.
  • 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.

Beckford

• New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change, International Sociological Association Research Committee, ISBN 0803980035
  • "New Religious Movement"

Melton

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

• "a 13 year old religious leader from India"
• "He assumed the role of Perfect Master at his father’s funeral"
• "a Sant Mat leader"
• " Spiritual leader"
• "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. [...] Ex members attacked the group with standard anti cult charges of brainwashing and mind control."

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.

[...]

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.

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.

[...]

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.

Dupertius

• How People Recognize Charisma: The Case of Darshan in Radhasoami and Divine Light Missio Lucy DuPertuis, University of Guam, Sociological Analysis 1986, 47, 2.111-124
  • [Describes PR as being from the "spiritual lineage from Sant Mat and Radhasoami traditions". No other terming used.]
  • This analysis examines the case of Divine Light Mission,9 a 1970's New Religious Movement whose leader and doctrine came from India. It will trace, in both India and the West, the intertwining of belief and meditative discipline which helped followers generate and sustain over time, in his presence and in his absence, a perception of their spiritual leader as divine.
  • DLM was founded in India by Shri Hans Ji Maharaj who, despite the usual successional disputes, assumed leadership of his particular Radhasoami lineage upon his guru's death and became Satguru ("true guru") (Mangalwadi, 1977:192).

1987

Bromley

• Hammond, Phillip E.; Bromley, David G. (1987). The Future of new religious movements. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. pp. p.35-8. ISBN 0-86554-238-4. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Charismaric leader"
  • "leader of new religious movement"

1989

Levine

• Levine, Saul, in Cults and New Religious Movements A Report of the American Psychiatric Association Edited by Marc Galanter, M. D. 1989 ISBN 0-89042-212-5
  • Groups that this author has heard called cults by concerned relatives of members have included Catholics, Mormons, Orthodox Jewry, Born Again Christians, Bahai, IBM, est, and Gestalt, to name but a few. For purposes of this chapter, however, we will use as examples groups about which there appears to be considerable external unanimity. That is, these four--Hare Krishna, the Unification Church, Children of God, and the Divine Light Mission-have probably been held in less esteem by more people than most of the other groups combined (other similarly vilified groups models which have inspired widespread fear and loathing include Scientology, The Way International, Bagwan Rajneesh, Jews for Jesus, Synanon, and others).
  • Virtually all the groups are rigidly structured, hierarchically and pyramidally. That is, there is no disputing that there is a single, overall leader, who is usually imbued by the group with superhuman and mystical powers. At times he is formally deified, as with the Divine Light Mission's Maharaj Ji-"The Perfect Master"...
  • Furthermore, from the perspective of outsiders, especially parents, the perception that their children are being financially exploited is seen as one of the most pernicious and malevolent aspects of the group. This is particularly of concern when the leader (Moon, Majaraj Ji, Bagwan Rajneesh, Hubbard, and so on) lives in ostentation and offensive opulence, while the members may be at the subsistence level.

1990

Wilson

• Wilson, Bryan (1990). The social dimensions of sectarianism: sects and new religious movements in contemporary society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. p.239. ISBN 0-19-827883-7. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • "New religious movement"

1993

Parsons

• Parsons, Gerald (1993). The Growth of religious diversity: Britain from 1945. London: Routledge in association with the Open University. pp. p.282. ISBN 0-415-08326-5. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • "Hindu derived [...] New religious movement"

Saliba

• Salita, John A. DIALOGUE WITH THE NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS: ISSUES AND PROSPECTS. Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 30:1, Winter 1993. pp. 51-80
  • There is little doubt that the relationship between the major religious groups in Western society (Christian and Jewish) and the new religious movements (NRM's for short)(1) cannot be described as amicable. When one reads the popular religious literature on "sects" and "cults," one is left with the conviction that fear, suspicion, confrontation, antagonism, and belligerency dominate most of the perceptions of and responses to their presence and activities.
    • 1. Popular and psychiatric literature often employs the word "cults" in a pejorative sense to refer to many new religions, particularly those of Eastern origin. In this essay the much less derogatory phrase, "new religious movements," has been adopted, following the common usage in the social sciences and in academic religious literature. Other words or phrases that have been at times employed to denote the NRM's are: fringe or marginal religious movements and new or alternative religions. None of these designations implies theological evaluations of their truth-claims or moral actions.
  • Second, many of the new religions are in a state of flux. Cases like those of the Divine light Mission (Elan Vital)(79) and the Holy Order of Mans(80) are excellent illustrations. The former, a Hindu religious group that stresses its own meditation technique, has changed radically since the early 1980% when it was usually listed with dangerous cults. The latter, a gnostic group, has simply ceased to exist as a distinct NRM.
    • 79. The major study of the Divine Light Mission is still James V. Downton, Jr.'s Sacred Journeys: The Conversion of Young Americans to Divine Ligftí Mission (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). The changes that have occurred in this group have not yet been recorded in academic literature.

Shinn

• Shinn, Larry. WHO GETS'TO DEFINE RELIGION? THE CONVERSION/BRAINWASHING CONTROVERSY, Volume 19, Number 3 / July 1993 Religious Studies Review/ pp. 195-206 (Book reviews)
  • Anthony and other colleagues report on the seemingly causal attraction between potential converts who have experienced psychotherapy and some "Eastern mystical cults," such as Maher Baba or the Divine Light Mission.

1994

Goring & Whaling

• Whaling, Frank; Goring, Rosemary (1994). Larousse dictionary of beliefs and religions. Paris: Larousse. pp. p.145. ISBN 0-7523-0000-8. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • "Divine Light Mission -- A new religious movement centered upon the work of Guru Maharaj Ji"

1995

Miller

• Miller, Timothy (1995). America's alternative religions. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press. pp. p.364. ISBN 0-7914-2397-2. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • "He [Maharaj ji] may be reaching more listeners than ever, especially abroad, but is role is that of public speaker, and his religious movement is essentially defunct"

York

• York, Michael (1995). The emerging network: a sociology of the New Age and neo-pagan movements. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. p.237. ISBN 0-8476-8001-0. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • Church-sect typology
  • "New religious movements [which] have received strong sociological investigation [such as] Divine Light Mission (Guru Maharaj ji)

1997

Goring

• Goring, Rosemary (1997). Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions (Wordsworth Collection). Wordsworth Editions Ltd. pp. p.145. ISBN 1-85326-354-0. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • "A new religious movement centered upon the work of Guru Maharaj Ji"

News

• • MILLIONAIRE cult leader Maharaj Ji, (known to his followers as the "Exploding Peace Bomb" and the "Lord of the Universe"), has returned to Australia to recruit new followers. The guru is holding a secret brainstorming session on a former cattle property in remote bushland 60 km west of Brisbane all weekend.
  • In the early 1970's the guru became an international household name as the teen leader of the Divine Light Mission cult. When the cult was at its height, many of the followers or "premies" lived in DLM houses or Ashrams and paid their entire salaries to the cult.
  • One former DLM member, Stephen Faulds, this week told the Courier-Mail that cult members would take out home loans and then all the occupants would pay off the mortgage. Former DLM president Robert Mishler, who has since left the cult, said that in the early 1970's DLM took more than $5 million from missions around the world.
  • The luxury twin-engine jet is just part of the incredible life of luxury of the cult leader.
  • In 1974 the 16 year old Maharaji caused a split in the cult when he married a 24 year old air hostess. The marriage sparked a massive internecine feud, with Maharaji's mother trying to sack him as leader. But his worldwide status enabled him to remain a dominant force. During his reign, he was hailed by his followers as a living god and acquired the title of the "Exploding Peace Bomb".
  • The cult boasts a website titled "Premie" and lists a series of worldwide events where devotees can catch up with Maharaji as well as messages of love from followers to their revered guru. But on an "ex-premie" web page, The Courier-Mail found numerous allegations that the cult had shattered people's lives.

• The Lure of the Cult, Time Magazine, April 7, 1997 [1]
  • The modern era of cultism dates to the 1970s, when the free inquiry of the previous decade led quite a few exhausted seekers into intellectual surrender. Out from the rubble of the countercultures came such groups as the Children of God and the Divine Light Mission, est and the Church of Scientology, the robotic political followers of Lyndon LaRouche and the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. On Nov. 18, 1978, the cultism of the '70s arrived at its dark crescendo in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 members of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple died at his order, most by suicide

1998

News

• FORMER GURU ON A DIFFERENT MISSION, Rebecca Jones Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer 30 January 1998 Rocky Mountain News
  • His mother didn't like her, and she set about trying to get her oldest son, Bal Bhagwan Ji, named head of the DLM in India.... Nowadays, former cult members estimate Maharaji (he's dropped the Guru from his name and simplified the spelling) has 100,000 to 200,000 followers, mostly in India and Nepal. He's said to encourage his followers to offer him donations - which they dutifully do - so he and his "nonprofit" Elan Vital avoid taxes.

1999

Aagard

• Aagaard, Johannes (1980), "Who Is Who In Guruism?", Update: A Quarterly Journal on New Religious Movements (Dialogcentret) IV (3), http://www.dci.dk/index.php?view=article&catid=142&id=333&option=com_content&Itemid=36, retrieved on 7 July 2008
  • During the first 6 years of the new movement its head was Shri Hans, the father of the young Maharaj Ji, who, at the age of 8 years, succeeded his father in 1966. In 1969 the mission began its work in the West.

Cresswell & Willson

• Cresswell, Jamie; Wilson, Bryan (1999). New religious movements: challenge and response. New York: Routledge. pp. pp.268-9. ISBN 0-415-20050-4. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Elan Vital, formerly known as the Divine Ling Mission." "New religious movement"

Galanter

• Galanter, Marc (1999). Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195123697 9780195123692 0195123700 9780195123708.
  • "the Divine Light Mission, a Hindu-oriented new religious movement."
  • "A Charismatic Religious Sect"
  • "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."
  • "spiritual leader"
  • 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.

Fahlbusch et al

• Fahlbusch, Erwin; Geoffrey William Bromley; et al. The encyclopedia of Christianity. Publisher: Grand Rapids, Mich. : Wm. B. Eerdmans ; Leiden, Netherlands : Brill, 1999-<2005 >
  • The movement lives on, however, and with its cultic festivals in various cities attracts many who find something uncomplicated in the world peace that such organizations promise.

2001

Rhodes

• Rhodes, Ron The Challenge of the Cults and New Religions: The Essential Guide to Their History, Their Doctrine, and Our Response, Ch. 1: Defining Cults. Zondervan, 2001, ISBN 0310232171, p. 32.
  • Ron Enroth has noted that the authoritarian nature of cult leaders is often evident in their titles. Examples include "Guru Ma" (Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal Triumphant), "Perfect Master" (Guru Maharaj Ji), "Father David" (late leader of ...

2002

Geaves

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

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 suPertusimpiritual 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.

Irving Hexman

• Hexham, Irving (2002). Pocket dictionary of new religious movements. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press. pp. pp.41-2. ISBN 0-8308-1466-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • Divine Light Mission "A modern Hindu missionary movement was founded by Shri Hans Maharaj Ji and came to the West under the leadership of his son, the thirteen-year-old guru Maharaj ji"

Woodhead

• Woodhead, Linda (2002). Religions in the modern world: traditions and transformations. New York: Routledge. pp. p.269. ISBN 0-415-21783-0. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • New Religious Movement - Divine Light Mission

News

• Guru's followers flock to hear him speak. Australian Associated Press General News By Rosemary Desmond - 4 September 2002
  • Prem Rawat or "Maharaji" is worth following around the world. A three-day gathering of members of his Elan Vital cult has drawn more than 3,500 people from 60 countries with their teacher's thoughts aired tonight in a bushland setting at Peak Crossing, south-west of Brisbane.

2003

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.

[...]

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.

Houghton Mifflin

• "Maharaj Ji" in The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography. U.S., 2003, ISBN 061825210X, p. 994
  • There remains a reduced but devoted following for the cult, now known as ElanVital, based in the US.

Barret

Barrett, David V., The New Believers (2003), Cassel, ISBN 1-84403-040-7 Pages 325-329 Chapter "Eastern Movements in the West"

• "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."

James T Richardson

James T. Richardson, a sociologist and lawyer that studies new religious movements, and Brock Kilbourne, have argued for researchers to abandon the use of the term "cult" based on the well-documented fact that attitudes towards new religions are heavily influenced by the mass media who has presented the subject in heavily negative and mainly sensationalistic terms; while other scholars refer to activist in the anti-cult movement as not making distinctions between Guru Maharaji and others.

2004

Geaves

• Geaves, Ron. From Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital and Beyond. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 2004 Volume 7, Issue 3, pages 45-62
  • Thus, Price set up the possibility of a conflict between Maharaji's attempts to balance his own commitment to the ideal of no structural organization and the need to continue teaching, on one hand, and the constraints or pressures arising from the above four factors, on the other. I agree with Price's analysis that Divine Light Mission transformed itself into a "sect" throughout the early 1970s. Price argued that the sect was marked by a degree of "epistemologica! authoritarianism" although she acknowledged that this was never total and, in reality, a high degree of "epistemological individualism" existed.13
  • It is Price's third factor, the leader's competence, which is significant in understanding the relationship between continuity and adaptation in the global promotion of Maharaji's message since the 1970s. As a child selected by his father as the most able person to take the teachings forward, Maharaji had not been particularly concerned with the organizational structures of Divine Light Mission in India. He toured the country speaking at large events during his school vacations, and he left the responsibility for running the Mission to his mother, elder brother and senior followers. The mahatmas, or members of the renuncíate order begun by his father, were largely responsible for teaching the four techniques of self-knowledge to those interested.
  • The Advait Mat masters often disavowed the material inheritance consisting of any properties or monies accrued to the previous master by his followers' efforts to provide support for the promotion of the teachings, and sometimes departed from the previous master's disciples if they chose not to recognize the new claimant's authority. The new master derived his authority from his charisma, his desire to promote the teachings, and the authorization and blessings of the previous master.19 Authority was based on the charisma of the living master, his success in promoting the message, and the student's personal experience.
  • Maeve Price also argued that the decline of Divine Light Mission was inevitable unless the movement could resolve a number of problems with recruitment, membership commitment, and financial stability. Price concluded that problems would continue to occur regarding organizational structures within Divine Light Mission, because its following was comprised mainly of counterculture youth opposed to formal rules and bureaucratic disciplines; recruitment was limited to the victims of drug culture and friendship circles; and Maharaji, although he had gained sole control of Divine Light Mission, still needed to discover "how to manipulate the movement to achieve the ends" he manifestly sought. She argued that charisma was not enough.29
  • Divine Light Mission had undoubtedly taken on the characteristics of a sect with definite borders that differentiated insiders from outsiders.

2005

Ronald M. Enroth

• Enroth, Ronald M. (2005). A guide to new religious movements. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press. pp. p.22. ISBN 0-8308-2381-6. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • "[A] Eastern-oriented new religious movement"

2006

Ashcraft & Gallagher

• W. Michael Ashcraft; Gallagher, Eugene V. (2006). Introduction to new and alternative religions in America. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. pp. p.63. ISBN 0-275-98712-4. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • "Prem Rawat, more commonly known and Guru Maharaji or Maharaji, sprung to fame in the early 1970s as a child guru" [...] Significantly he has been able to present his message in a way that trascend his origin in North India and move to a universalist teaching based on inner experience and the shedding of any cultural or religious cosmologies [...] [which] makes him interesting to scholars of New Religious Movements".

2007

McLeof

• McLeod, Hugh (2007). The religious crisis of the 1960s. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. pp. p.133. ISBN 0-19-929825-4. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • One of many groups "new forms of religion or 'spirituality'"

Aldridge

• Aldridge, Alan (2007). Religion in the contemporary world: a sociological introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity. pp. pp.58-9. ISBN 0-7456-3405-2. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • "The categories world-rejecting, world-affirming, and world-accommodating are put forward as ideal types. Any given religious movement may well exhibit features of more than one type and this can given rise to bitter internal conflicts. One example is the Divine Light Mission. [...] The trappings of an Asian faith were abandoned and the movement became overly Westernized.[...] He repudiated any claims to divine status [...] preferring to be known as Maharaji or is family name, Prem Rawat [...] and [Elan Vital] has gravitated toward the world-accommodating type of religious movement.

News

• Cult Leader Gives Cash to Lord Mayor Appeal, Evening Standard, UK/May 31, 2007, By Robert Mendick
  • The former head of a religious cult is involved in raising funds for this year's Lord Mayor's appeal. Prem Rawat, who has acquired vast wealth after years of being worshipped by millions of followers, is listed as a 'key supporter' to the annual appeal, the Evening Standard can reveal.
  • Mr Rawat's involvement has raised eyebrows. Formerly known as the Guru Maharaj Ji, he enjoyed huge support in the Seventies and Eighties as spiritual leader of The Divine Light Mission, a religious cult which set up communes across the world. Mr Rawat, 49, was known to his disciples as the 'Lord of the Universe' and considered a descendant of God. He was a teenager when he first came to the UK from India in 1971, but fell out with his mother and other cult members when at 16 he married one of his students, a 25-year-old American.