Bye bye Love
It was at the last event I attended in Barcelona, just last month, that the doubts I had kept hidden under the carpet for years resurfaced once again.
It all began with, "Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to... �I thought� "the world's only Oscar-winning rabbit!", but no, the Ambassador of Peace, Doctor Honoris Causa, Guinness World Record holder, acclaimed author and bestselling writer…"
Later came, "I have a gift for you": a few mediocre songs created with AI. Particularly pathetic was the sight of Maharaji sitting motionless in his chair on stage while the audience danced about theatrically with their arms raised, celebrating "the gift" in true evangelical fashion. It reminded me of the events of the late seventies where the blatant cult of personality included collective emotional outbursts like this one. The only difference was that it was no longer the young "Lord of the Universe," crowned as Krishna, sitting there with a smile, but an Ambassador of Peace, Doctor Honoris Causa, Guinness World Record holder, acclaimed author and bestselling writer.
The question I ask myself as I write these lines is not whether this man owns a collection of cars, planes, helicopters, or mansions, nor whether he belongs on the Forbes list or on some hypothetical list of international frauds. What I wonder is this: how was it possible that so many of us spent most of our lives without reacting to such an accumulation of anomalies hidden beneath the surface?
The meditation, that Maharaji calls Knowledge to make it his, has been, and still is, central to my life. It remains my compass, my centre, the thing that makes me a little more aware each day of the value of this life. But I do not owe that to Prem Rawat. He is not the one to whom we should feel profoundly grateful. If anything, we owe gratitude to ourselves�or, if you prefer, using his language, to the thirst that leads us to find water in the desert.
When you became a member of the group�that is, when you received the Knowledge�you were led to believe that you received the capacity to know (something that from their point of view, obviously you did not have). As far as I know, they still do this, only that thanks God, the number of aspirants has diminished considerably. I had received nothing that was not already within me, neither materially nor spiritually nor the rest of us
The inner silence was already there. The miraculous flow of the breath was already there. The ability to focus our attention on that silence or on our breathing was already there, and the possibility of perceiving a reality beyond thought it is still open to anyone with or without "knowledge."
What I and many of you did receive was a substantial dose of disempowerment, which, in some cases like mine, lasted far too long. If you felt peace when you stopped listening to the constant chatter of your mind, you no longer gave yourself credit for that discovery, but attributed it to a man about whom, in reality, you knew almost nothing. If you experienced serenity, it was thanks to him. If you saw things more clearly, it was thanks to him. If you felt grateful to anyone, it had to be to him. Meanwhile, this so-called divine incarnation of Krishna was steadily enriching himself materially beyond limits.
On top of that, you were told that if you kept him in your mind at the moment of leaving this world, you would go with him, and that you would never have to reincarnate in this world again. One more reason not to follow him.