In his book, Hear Yourself, Prem relates a beautiful story of his awakening
"One day I went out into the garden and had this desire to grasp the moment. I remember my heart was entirely open to the day and I was happy walking around inspecting everything growing there. A little later, I was sitting under one of the magnolia trees, looking at the clouds and the flowers, when I had an overpowering sense that whatever created me also made these magnolia trees and the perfumed flowers, and put the dew on the lawn, and carried the sun from horizon to horizon, and made those fat clouds float across the blue sky. In that moment, the he or she or it that originally created me said, very softly: "Just feel."
It was a perfect sentiment for a perfect moment. Just feel.
From then on I could sit under that magnolia tree and go into a feeling in which I had no wants, no wishes, no inner need to do anything. It felt good just to be. Ever since, a voice has continued to say to me: "This day is for you," and it means that day back in the garden just as it means the day I'm living in right now.
That feeling part of me hasn't changed. It really hasn't. That day in the garden was for me, and I’ve understood that I must never lose that feeling. I have experienced the deep connection again and again and again. It is my reality - a feeling of perfect peace - and everything else is noise (sometimes enjoyable noise, sometimes distracting noise). Perfection is not only the memory of that moment from childhood but the living experience of being able to just feel right now."
Its no wonder he spent so much time terrified of being punished for not doing his homework, he spent too much time in perfect peace under the magnolia trees.
Is this the same Prem Rawat we knew who wore out pinball machines, blew countless speakers apart playing Peter Frampton Comes Alive at volume level 11, souped up gadgets to deliver painful electric jolts, screamed and shouted his way through speeches condemning his followers for not surrendering adequately and generally lived his life in a circle of chaos?
Or is this book ghost written by Ole Grunbaum?
