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Date:

Mon, Aug 02, 1999 at 22:29:21 (EDT)

From:

bill

Email:

To:

Everyone

Subject:

A Painter's Tale
Message:
quite a story, thanks for shareing that.

I also used to work on all the stages. But the american ones.

You are right about the back stages. They were complete living quarters with bathrooms and kids play areas and rooms for his brother the 'king' raja ji and his wife and kids. At the hans jayanti outdoor programs in florida, there was his houseing in the 4 double trailers that were combined in a square with tent garage nearby, and a couple hundred yards away was the stage and we had to make him the behind stage houseing also.

I was up for 5 nights in a row prepareing the backstage and 3 of those days was during the 'festival' and so we couldnt work during the day because he was there on and off. I couldnt sleep during the day because, well, I had no housing but that is another story. I was delerious and couldnt follow his 'satsang' to save my life. I was stretched to the point you mentioned by the exhaustion and finally we were told to not come anymore.

I have to say that the girls that were setting up the living quarters were REALLY nuts because the head of thier service was a couple of really freaked out power mad women that added all the elements of elitism and tension and uncomfortable extremeism to the whole set up scene. It was a wierd scene around the lord always. Something about 'where darkness meets light' as I remember rawat claiming. He had bill patterson tell us that we were 'gawking' and so I remember watching anyway and seeing that no one dared look at him as he walked by from then on. Your post really caught the quality of the stage world really well. I remember the girl at the Rome 77 event who was in charge of the stage construction being fried down to a crisp.

MANY times rawat would wait till the last minute to approve changes or plans and we would have to work long hours to pull it off. The snafu's were NOT the work of pam or premies. HE had total control of the stage approval and he delighted in disapproving and delaying and changeing and complaining. Name one time he said something good. I cannot and I did stages from 74 till the nineties. 

5 Brighter than 1000 suns as seen through night vision goggles
4 As bright as the lights on Maharaji's jet
3 As bright as a 60 watt light bulb
2 As bright as a pile of burning ghi on a swinging arti tray
1 As bright as the inner light as seen by the third eye
Other