Don't forget to rate this post down below!
well I can see that he gives the okay to post over here so I have just copied the text of his story, it's so good.
Re: Link to Prem Rawat Critical Discussion Facebook Group
Posted by:
lesley
Date:
07/27/2024, 16:53:32
Original URL:
Click here (However, the link may be stale.)
I find it very difficult to follow Facebook threads but did see a gem from Patrick Wilson - to paraphrase, it's not facts that people leave over but because they see something for themselves that makes them doubt Rawat. anyway, here's the storyPaddy MaclachlanA new kid had moved into the flat. Maurice, another Kennington Oval boy. He was a few years younger than most of us but he'd already been to India in a van, at the age of just fifteen. He'd travelled there with six other followers of Maharaj Ji, an Indian boy guru, and stayed for a while at his ashram in Dehra Dun. At Maharaj Ji's behest, he'd come back to Britain and helped open an ashram in Aberdeen. Which entailed little more than renting a house, throwing out the furniture, painting it white, erecting an altar in the living room and moving a load of people in. But still, he was only sixteen. Then he drifted out of it, for reasons he was vague about, and moved down to London with us.Even by our standards, he cut an odd figure. He had long, straight hair right down his back and his clothes made him look like a cross between Gandhi and Biggles: a leather flying helmet from the First World War, a tweed jacket, cavalry twill trousers, sturdy brogues and an emerald green kaftan. He had a noticeably squeaky voice and it tickled him to pepper his speech with English upper class slang. "What ho chaps!" he'd squawk as he entered the sitting room. Then he'd take up his favourite place on top of the fridge, arrange himself in the full lotus position, shut his eyes and meditate. Sometimes he'd get so intensely into it, his eyes would roll back in his head and flicker open, just a slit, so only the whites were visible. It looked freaky.Weirder still, in the midst of the mayhem that was 54b, he didn't smoke, drink or take drugs of any kind, not even aspirin, not even the caffeine in coffee or tea, and he ate no animal products. He did allow himself to wear animal products, if necessary. But as he squeakily explained, he made a point of polishing his leatherwear frequently, "as a mark of respect to the jolly old cow".He considered refined white sugar more pernicious than heroin and followed a macrobiotic diet; brown rice, seaweed, umeboshi plums, daikon radish, miso. He'd spend hours paring his carrots to the width and length of matchsticks; he said it was more macrobiotically balanced that way. Woe betide anyone he caught cutting them into disc shapes. Mad as a hatter, no doubt, but it wasn't all bollocks. There was a serenity about him that struck us all as unique, something none of us had sensed in anyone before. I think every one of us thought, at some time or another, "whatever it is he's got, I want." ….….Looking back on it now, I can't believe we went for it. But like thousands of young people at that time, we'd taken huge amounts of LSD, and it's an immensely powerful drug. And although we wouldn't have admitted it - we weren't even really aware of it - the experience had badly shaken us. We wanted life to make sense again. We wanted order. We wanted explanation. We wanted our mummies and a nice glass of milk.We were perfect cult fodder.None of the mania escaped us at 54b. One or two of the inmates stoutly refused to have anything to do with it, but the rest of us took to haranguing next door's downer freaks and drug dealers with a zeal they found unsettling. They started calling us the holy heavies. And we started changing our appearance and lifestyle at a speed they found alarming. Mata Ji [Maharaj Ji's mother] had obviously never recovered from her first sight of Maurice and his fellow filthy hippies when they turned up, grinning and stinking, outside her residence in Dehra Dun. At her specific instruction, new devotees had to get their hair cut, get shaved, get a job and generally go straight. Girls wore prim, virginal blouses, matronly cardigans and floor length skirts. Boys wore suits, usually second hand from Divine Sales, and haircuts that looked like they were done by candlelight with a bread knife. If the overall effect was a bit down at heel and dowdy, so much the better; it tied in nicely with the notion that vanity was just another illusion to tie you to the wheel.We even rearranged the flat so it was run on monastic lines. The sitting room we painted gold with a giant cutout picture of the guru, cross legged and surrounded by a brilliant sunburst, hovering on one wall. Instead of separate bedrooms we set up boys' and girls' dormitories, both with wall to wall mattresses and communal clothes boxes. So the first one into bed at night was most comfortable, and the first one up in the morning was best dressed. My cosy brown bedroom became an all-white meditation room and we also had a crafts room, dedicated to the current moneymaking scheme, whatever it was. This was the least used room in the flat and also the place where the vow of chastity sometimes came unstuck….…. Not long after, I took the plunge and moved into a proper, official Divine Light Mission ashram. Apart from Maurice who'd been in and out, I think I was the first of us to do it. It was seen as an act of final, lifelong surrender, like becoming a priest or a nun. Your life was no longer your own and as a symbol of that, you could expect to be sent at random to anywhere in the country. I drew Liverpool, though it could just as easily have been Plymouth, Streatham, Inverness, Hull, anywhere. My girlfriend Jackie, who was the next one in after me, drew Newcastle.By now it was deep into winter. Maharaj Ji had long since gone home; the excitement of his presence was fading into hearsay and folklore. All you had left was the life. Getting up at six to sing a twenty verse hymn to the picture on the altar. Dozing through the enforced hour of morning meditation. Knocking on doors, scouring the streets of Liverpool for Divine Sales gear, in a draughty, rattling van. Getting watery dal, vegetable stirabout and burnt chapatis for dinner. Eating it cross legged off a tablecloth on the kitchen floor. Dozing again through the evening meeting. Sleeping on the floor in a bedroom shared with two snorers, a shouter in his sleep and a certifiable nutcase. I was starting to think maybe I wasn't cut out for it. Apart from anything else, frankly, it was all turning into a bit of a drag.But it wasn't a commitment I'd made lightly. Not at all. For days I agonised over my loss of faith. I seriously envied the housemates, and there were a good few of them, who seemed to be happy and doing OK. I started to really believe I was a freak. Finally one night, I took my crisis to the house leader. His organisational title was ‘ashram secretary' and his status gave him a whole room of his own, which doubled as the ashram office. In all the weeks I'd been living there, I'd never dared to venture into it since my very first day. I knocked and walked straight in, just in time to see him do three things at once - turn Radio One off, sweep a packet of biscuits into the top drawer of his desk and shove a Batman comic in his in-tray. It was a cold night but the window was open. I could smell cigarettes. He straightened himself at his desk and gave me an official glare. For a moment I thought I was back at the Old Bailey. I told him what I was going through. His answer took the form of a forty minute lecture. The gist of it was, yes, I was a wretch and I wasn't trying hard enough.Next morning I ignored the six o'clock alarm call, missed breakfast, got up late, packed what little gear I had and headed for the motorway. A lorry took me down to Newport Pagnell and I was back in Larkhall Rise by by tea time.
