Founding and early years in India Shri Hans Maharaj Ji, initiated by the
Sant Mat guru Sri
Swarupanand Ji, began teaching in the
Sind and
Lahore provinces of India in the 1930s. In 1950 he began initiating
Mahatmas, followers who could themselves initiate devotees, and formed a magazine called "Hansadesh" which is still active in 2017. In 1960 in the city of
Patna, he founded the Divine Light Mission (
Divya Sandesh Parishad) to organize followers across Northern India. At the time of his death on 19 July 1966, the Divine Light Mission had six million members in India. During the customary 13 days of mourning, his mother and senior officials of the organization discussed the succession. Prem Rawat, who was 8 years-old at the time, addressed the crowd and was accepted by them as their teacher and "
Perfect Master" and was named as Bal Bhagwan. Because of his age, effective control of the DLM was shared by the whole family.
International Footprints In 1971, Rawat, then known as Guru Maharaji Ji, travelled to the West against his mother's wish & will. DLM was established in the U.S. and the UK. The U.S. branch was headquartered in
Denver, Colorado. It was registered there as a non-profit corporation and in 1974 was recognized as a church by the United States
Internal Revenue Service under section 501(c)(3). By 1972 DLM was operating in North and South America, Europe and Australia. By 1973, DLM was operating in 37 countries, tens of thousands of people had been initiated (become premies) and several hundred centers and dozens of ashrams formed in the U.S. and the UK. DLM said it had 8,000 devotees and forty ashrams at that time. In the United States, the staff at the headquarters grew to 125, and
Telexes connected the headquarters with the ashrams. Social service facilities, including a medical clinic in New York City, were opened. A Women's Spiritual Right Organization dedicated to reaching out to persons in prisons, mental institutions and hospitals, was organized. The U.S. DLM published two periodicals:
And It Is Divine (
AIID), a monthly magazine with a circulation of 90,000; and
Divine Times, a biweekly newspaper with a circulation of 60,000. The cover price of
AIID was $1 but most were given away free, as were the advertisements. The World Peace Corps (WPC) was established as a security force to provide protection for Rawat. After Bob Mishler, the DLM President, was removed from power he said that Rawat got the idea to start a bodyguard unit after watching
The Godfather. The WPC became the organizing agent of meetings and businesses.
Detroit incident On 8 August 1973, while Rawat was at the Detroit City Hall to receive a testimonial resolution praising his work, Pat Halley, who was at the time a reporter from Detroit's underground periodical
Fifth Estate, slapped him in the face with a shaving cream pie. Rawat responded by saying that he did not want his attacker arrested or hurt, but the reporter was attacked by two men a few days later and seriously injured. When local members heard of the incident they notified Rawat in Los Angeles who extended his regrets and condolences to Pat Halley's family, and requested that the DLM conduct a full investigation. The assailants, one of them an Indian, were identified. They admitted their part in the incident and offered to turn themselves in. The Chicago police were immediately notified. The Detroit police declined to initiate extradition proceedings, variously claiming that they were unable to locate the assailants, or that the cost of extraditing them from Chicago to Detroit made it impractical. The arrest warrant remained outstanding. This lack of action by the Detroit police was attributed by some to Halley's radical politics. A spokesman later stated that the Indian national had been "shipped off to Europe".
Festivals Festivals were a regular part of the Divine Light Mission's activities and a source of revenue. Members would pay from $50 to $100 to attend, and
Darshan events would generate considerable donations. The DLM celebrated three main festivals: Holi, which is celebrated in late March or early April; Guru Puja, which was held in July; and Hans Jayanti, which falls in November. Hans Jayanti marks the birthday of the DLM's founder. According to
Marc Galanter, the members at a festival in Orlando, Florida "looked as though they had been drawn from the graduate campus of a large university—bright, not too carefully groomed, casually dressed. They were lively, good-tempered, and committed to their mutual effort. There was no idleness, brashness, marijuana, beer, loud music, or flirtation—all hallmarks of a more typical assembly of people in their twenties". Other festivals were held nationally and locally, and sometimes organized with little advance notice. Attending as many as ten festivals a year meant many members were unable to hold regular full-time jobs, and required sacrificing leisure and community activities in order to devote time to earning the money needed to attend. In 1972, seven
jumbo jets were chartered to bring members from the U.S. and other countries to the Hans Jayanti festival held at the main ashram near
New Delhi. 2500 foreign members camped out at the mission's "city of love" for a month. The event attracted a reported total of 500,000 attendees. When Rawat flew to India to attend he was accused of attempting to smuggle $65,000 worth of cash and jewelry into the country, but no charges were ever filed, and the Indian government later issued an apology. The accusation led to negative coverage in the Indian press and hard feelings between Rawat and his mother, who had persuaded him to return to India for the festival. The free three-day event was billed as "the most significant event in human history" that would herald "a thousand years of peace for people who want peace", the idea being that peace would come to the world as individuals experienced inner peace. The 500-member tour was dubbed "Soul Rush" and traveled to seven cities on the way to Houston.
Rennie Davis, well known as one of the defendants in the
Chicago Seven trial, attracted extensive media coverage as a spokesperson for Rawat. At the event, Davis declared that "All I can say is, honestly, very soon now, every single human being will know the one who was waited for by every religion of all times has actually come." In a
press conference at Millennium, Rawat denied being the Messiah, and when asked by reporters about the contradictions between what he said about himself and what his followers said about him, Rawat replied, "Why don't you do me a favor ... why don't you go to the devotees and ask their explanation about it?" While Rawat's brother Satpal was nominally in charge of the festival, Davis was the "General Coordinator" and handled the details. Expectations for the event were very high, with predictions that it would attract more than 100,000, or even as many as 400,000 people from Satpal. Davis privately said he thought 22,000 was a more realistic estimate and reserved 22,000 hotel beds. There was even talk about a space in the parking lot reserved for a flying saucer to land. When Satpal heard about the flying saucer he said, "If you see any, just give them some of our literature". The event featured spectacular staging, a 56-piece rock band and a giant video screen that showed a barrage of shots from the tumultuous 1960s. Though it was not covered by the national television news, it did get extensive coverage in the print media. The premies were reported to be "cheerful, friendly and unruffled, and seemed nourished by their faith". To the 400 premie parents who attended, Rawat "was a rehabilitator of prodigal sons and daughters". Media people found a "confused jumble of inarticulately expressed ideas." It was depicted in the award-winning U.S. documentary
"Lord of the Universe" broadcast by
PBS Television in 1974. The event was called the "youth culture event of the year". Singer-songwriter
Loudon Wainwright III visited the festival and later remarked that while the premies inside were looking happy the ones outside were arguing with
Jesus Freaks and
Hare Krishnas. Wainwright's song "I am the Way" was partly inspired by Prem Rawat. At the festival, Larry Bernstein, a prize-winning, 41-year-old architect described a "Divine City" to be built from the ground up starting the following year. It was to feature translucent hexagonal plastic houses stacked on concrete columns and connected with monorails. Polluting vehicles would be replaced by electric vehicles, and solar power would be used to provide energy. Cards would replace cash. The use of advanced technologies to ensure pollution-free air, Rennie Davis told a journalist, would be a practical demonstration of what it means to have Heaven on Earth. Two sites were suggested: either the
Blue Ridge Mountains or somewhere near
Santa Barbara, California. Plans for the city were delayed amid the fiscal crisis following the Millennium festival. The DLM incurred a debt estimated between $600,000 and over $1 million, attributed to poor management and low attendance. The debt severely damaged the DLM's finances. Event-related expenses were covered by short-term credit based on the expectation that contributions would pour in following the free festival. DLM's post-Millennium financial troubles forced it to close ashrams, sell its printing business and real estate, and to drop the lease on its IBM computer. Monthly donations fell from $100,000 to $70,000. According to Messer, "to pay the debts remaining from the Houston event, devotees all over the country turned over their own possessions to Divine Sales, which had crash garage sales, attended flea markets, and invented numerous activities to dispose of the goods." By 1976 it was able to reduce the debt to $80,000. Consequently, the festival necessitated policy shifts within the movement organization. In December 1973, when he turned 16, Rawat took administrative control of the Mission's U.S. branch and began to assert his independence from his mother who returned to India with Satpal. His marriage to his secretary, Marolyn Johnson, a 24-year-old follower from
San Diego, California, was celebrated at a non-denominational church in
Golden, Colorado. Rawat's mother, Mata Ji, had not been invited. As a result of his marriage, Rawat became an
emancipated minor. He called his wife "Durga Ji", after the Hindu goddess
Durga. His mother claimed that Rawat had broken his spiritual discipline by marrying, and had become a "playboy". She appointed Satpal as the new head of DLM India, but the Western premies remained loyal to Rawat. The bad press from the festivals and the rift caused by Prem Rawat's marriage in 1974 marked the end of the movement's growth phase. In 1975, Prem Rawat returned to India in an attempt to gain control of the Indian DLM. A court-ordered settlement resulted in his eldest brother Satpal retaining control of the Indian DLM, while Rawat maintained control of the DLM outside of India. One estimate had from 500 to 1200 members living in ashrams in the mid-1970s. By the end of the 1970s, the movement had lost an estimated 80% of its followers in the U.S. Bromley and Hammond attribute the decline of groups including the Divine Light Mission to internal factors, but also in part to the news media's "discrediting reports about their activities", accounts which created a "wide-spread public perception of 'mind control' and other 'cult' stereotypes." The Divine Light Mission also attracted the attention of the
anti-cult movement. Some members were violently kidnapped and
deprogrammed. Some former members became outspoken critics of the organization and attacked the group with what Melton calls "standard anti-cult charges of brainwashing and mind control". In reference to ex-followers, DLM spokesman Joe Anctil said that "A lot of people were just on a trip in the beginning. They felt they had to be 'hyped', and some didn't stay long enough to get beyond that. But we've changed as our understanding has changed." Bob Mishler, the founding president of the DLM in the U.S., was removed by Rawat in 1977 and gave an interview in 1979, along with the former vice president, in which he said he was concerned that the DLM was becoming a "tax evasion for the guru", and said he feared a repeat of
Jonestown. They also accused Rawat of engaging in inappropriate behavior. Mishler's charges found little support and did not affect the progress of the Mission. Melton said the mission was disbanded [when] Prem Rawat personally renounced the trappings of Indian culture and religion, to make his teachings independent of culture, beliefs and lifestyles. Prem Rawat was no longer to be venerated as a god or regarded as a Perfect Master. The ashrams were closed along with the Denver headquarters (1979). The Divine Light Mission organization was replaced by
Elan Vital; the U.S. organization's name was changed to Elan Vital in 1983, by filing an entity name change. Prem Rawat asked to be referred to as "Maharaji" instead of "Guru Maharaj Ji." According to
Ron Geaves, a religious scholar who has been associated with the teachings of Prem Rawat for the last thirty years: Maharaji has chosen a route of perpetual transformation in which organizational forms are created and utilized and then destroyed, thus providing flexibility to deal with rapidly changing social attitudes, to provide pragmatic solutions to internal problems, and above all to keep his students focused on the core message rather than the peripheral requirements of organizational forms. Since then the Elan Vital has been "virtually invisible." Rawat stopped granting interviews and making public announcements of his visits. As of 2008, he has continued to write, lecture, and tour with the support of the Elan Vital and the Prem Rawat Foundation.
DLM in India In 1975, Mata Ji took control of the DLM in India as a result of the rift and installed her eldest son,
Satpal Rawat, as its head. A lawsuit in India resulted in his brother Satpal gaining control of the Divine Light Mission in India, and Rawat continuing to lead DLM in the rest of the world. Satpal Rawat, now known as Shri Satpal Ji Maharaj, teaches "Manav Dharam" (the "Dharam [Religion] of Mankind"). He is also a politician and former
Union Minister in India, and founded Manav Utthan Sewa Samiti, which he describes as "an all-India registered voluntary social welfare and charitable organization", that is also "making freely available the spiritual Knowledge which is the essence of all religions." Satpal Rawat's supporters now assert that he is the rightful successor to his father,
Hans Ji Maharaj. Scholars that have written about the succession report that Satpal and the rest of the family accepted and supported Prem's declaration of succession for eight years. The Divine United Organization (DUO) was an organization registered under the Societies Registration Act 21 of 1860 with the Registrar of
Delhi in 1977, to disseminate the teachings of Prem Rawat in India. According to Geaves, DUO remained in India until it was replaced by
Raj Vidya Bhavan [sic]. ==Beliefs and practices==