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THE GOLDEN AGE
| AUSTRALIA |
Thursday, March 14, 1974 |
NO. 1 |
BAL BHAGWAN JI IN AUSTRALIA
| Sixteen months without Darshan came to a
sudden, blissful end with the arrival of Bal Bhagwan Ji on Thursday,
21st March, at Sydney International Airport. His plane from Honolulu
touched down out of a clear blue sky which for a week beforehand held
storm clouds and heavy rain. As Bal Bhagwan Ji cleared customs, the
Shri Hans film crew waited impatiently in the press room while the
media interviewed a Turkish entertainer billed as a hybrid of Liberace
and Danny La Rue.
The tail end chaos of that encounter was magically cleared by the
shining presence of Bal Bhagwan Ji. The room stilled, concentration was
restored, and the reporters adopted a more respectful attitude. Bal
Bhagwan Ji shook hands with the press, while the Shri Hans interviewer
melted into the sofa. Most of the questions, as usual, were directed
towards money and weight but Bal Bhagwan Ji transformed them to light
and love. He said He would be in Australia for about three weeks. When
asked if He was here to tighten up the Mission organisation, he
replied, "No, not at all. It's very free, just like a movement, it's
not even a religion, it's like a movement".
He talked mainly about the uselessness of constructing images
of Guru Maharaj Ji and the positive influence of Knowledge on people's
lives. When the interview came to an end, a photographer asked Bal
Bhagwan Ji to pose behind a garland. After the picture was taken, Bal
Bhagwan Ji blessed the unrealising gentleman by placing the flowers
around his neck!
Outside, two hundred overwhelmed premies sang the praises of
the Lord as Bal Bhagwan Ji, accompanied by Mahatmas Rajeshwaranand and
Padarthanand, walked amongst them and into a "white limousine bedecked
with flowers", as the morning paper put it. Bal Bhagwan Ji was
manifesting so much love, laughing and smiling most of the time.
In Australia we had preconceptualised from satsang and film an
image of the Lord's oldest brother as an almost stern, reverend
organiser and intellect. As often happens with the Knowledge, our minds
were blown completely by the actual reality. One cannot describe the
compassion and peace that a member of the Holy Family emanates.
Bal Bhagwan Ji's day was spent resting at the Divine Residence,
Mosman. That night a program was held at Mosman Town Hall. The regional
band and choir, christened `Harbinger' by Bal Bhagwan Ji, were followed
by powerful satsang from Mahatma Rajeshwaranand. Finally Bal Bhagwan Ji
arrived and gave beautiful satsang about the importance of meditation.
Saint Peter said that one day with the Lord is like a thousand
years. During His short stay in Sydney Bal Bhagwan Ji gave such an
incredible amount of Darshan that we thought we would have Him for
eternity. Friday morning saw Him giving satsang in the meditation room
of the Divine Residence followed by
Continued page 3
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with the halloween treats and tricks, I guess, notwithstanding the days and nights that rotate around between us, but it looks like the string on BB's halloween mask must have snapped.
Modified by Saph at Thu, Nov 02, 2006, 06:04:24
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>Western premies loyal to the little, fat rich guy< In strictly accurate historical terms 'rich' should perhaps not be applied to Rawat until after the Dettmer's 'reform' of 1975/76. Certainly the Rawat family was wealthy Indian standards but that of course did not make Prem rich in his own right, and although vast amounts of money were flowing to support Prem's lifestyle the DLM organisations had at least nominal title to the majority of funds. The point at which Prem became personally 'rich' was when up to $US5 million was transfered out of DLM accounts to Prem's personal control. Whatever the legal niceties of this arrangement it was undoubtedly a betrayal of trust of all those who had donated funds to support "the spread of Knowledge". For an explanation of the whole sordid process see: http://www.prem-rawat-maharaji.info/index.php?id=33 Nik
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According to the newspaper articles available at http://www.ex-premie.org/gallery/news/1975.html he had already skimmed a couple of million dollars out of DLM by that time. The picture is somewhat confused of course as this concentration on high living and monetary donations to Guru Maharaj Ji was the one thing that DLM was trying to hide back then but I'm pretty sure some of the old PAMs would confirm that while he mightn't have had the solid backing of assets then he was living on his cash flow and future possibilities.
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>he was living on his cash flow and future possibilities< For Sure ! But we should not lose sight of the fact that his initial wealth came from donations, that those donations were were given by people who believed Prem was "working for humanity", and that the donations were held by a Charity which could have placed a legal claim on those funds until the Dettmers initiative simply gave $5 milion to Rawat without any conditions. Nik
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Of course Guru Maharaj Ji already owns everything in the universe. Is there any documentaion for this "gift"?
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>Is there any documentaion for this "gift"?< Other than Dettmer's statement on EPO, I don't think there is anything in the public domain. Of course it should all be part of the DLM/Elan Vital Inc. (US) legal documents lodged with the IRS but whether anyone can find their way through that particular maze probably depends on both luck and persistence. N
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I think it depends on what you believe. Spiritual consciousness is mostly a mystery as to what causes it. There's a lot of conjecture, but nobody really knows what's going on. My own conjecture is that people have a sense of the divine and associate certain people and things with that sense. And I think that's quite arbitrary depending on what you've been taught. Or it might be that you have a natural affinity toward a particular spiritual practice or object. As far as Maharaji and his brother goes, some people just saw one representing the divine and not the other. But it could go any which way. Christians see Jesus as representing the divine, Buddhists see the divine in the Buddha, to Muslims it's Mohammed. What spiritual consciousness any of these people experience somehow is associated with these so-called spiritual leaders. But that, I think, is arbitrary based on what your particular belief is. It's not that any of these individuals are innately spiritual emanating their holiness. It's just that the holiness people feel inside themselves they associate with certain individuals.
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I agree that some innate spiritual sense within us seeks a focus. We look to latch onto someone who seems 'superior' and can show a direction. Personally, I feel that many people we meet can seem more spiritually attuned than ourselves. Maybe through their lives they have sought to follow goodness, and become (minor) channels of love. We are all potentially such channels. When it comes to the big guys, some remain totally unassailable, as they are the subjects of books. Others seem possibly to start as good people who are maybe attuned to spiritual practices from their background, but who lose it and become immersed in materialism. This shouldn't hopefully make us sceptical about the love and spiritual urge within us. I agree with you that we have a sense of the divine inside us. One part of the problem is that the Christian tradition teaches Jesus as some absolute channel of divine love, that he was both wholly human, yet totally divine. Personally, I think this to be wrong, and that Jesus was maybe a very evolved person and loving channel, but not in any way the underlying divinity. The fact that we projected this onto Maharaji (and were invited to do so by him and others) has caused great disorientation. Whereas we all are natural channels for the same, according to how we live or naturally are, and the notion of any person ever having been the total incarnation of the divinity has caused immense problems not just to us here, but potentially to the whole human race.
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"people have a sense of the divine and associate certain people and things with that sense."
"What spiritual consciousness any of these people experience somehow is associated with these so-called spiritual leaders."
"the holiness people feel inside themselves they associate with certain individuals".
This makes sense to me Jerry, it was all too convenient to shift our family religious associations and our new found insights due to experiments with conscious expansion, yoga etc.; even any sense of a purpose or calling we might have had to serve humanity in some way of our own choosing: all were so easily loaded onto Maharaji's all encompassing cart. He would do it; we didn't have to do anything: I was gradually dissuaded by other mahatmas from doing yoga, only the techniques were allowed!
We we were made to believe that he had all the calling, all the meaningful existence, the sense of fulfillment, we just had to go and fill up from his store of imagined spiritual energy to feel any ourselves, we just had to stand back and watch him do it and be thankful that we were on the same planet at the same time.
And in return we were not made aware of any of our own holiness, we were made to feel that never in a million years would we come close to the colossal mass of compact, self effulgent holiness he had going for him. I use holiness in the sense that if there is a holiness about the universe then all things must share in it equally, not in any special sense, which I might as well take this opportunity to say, I do not recognise.
Lp
Modified by Saph at Tue, Oct 24, 2006, 12:47:00
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It's not that any of these individuals are innately spiritual emanating their holiness. It's just that the holiness people feel inside themselves they associate with certain individuals. Right on. M is not real, but 'holiness' is. Susan called it her "life is amazing" attitude. Bill and Ted said 'Be excellent to one another'. It's what makes M's dishonesty so profoundly WRONG--not just a ripoff, but a fundamental rape-like violation of what makes life GOOD. IMO, M used to feel it (holiness, bliss) too. I look at old pictures and videos, and what I see is the boy guru 'doing nectar' and getting off on the whole thing as much as the premies. I don't know what he experiences today (probably a lot of ick) but IMO it was as 'real' to him as it was to most of us. He probably worshipped Sri M the same way we worshipped him. Unfortunately for those of us who want a 'perfect' experience (and so were attracted to a 'perfect master') it's holy and amazing and also painful and often just hard work, physical moral and emotional sweat required. Always BS somewhere to deal with. I think part of M's appeal was the idea that the bliss could be separated from the BS; what we see now is that someone has to take responsibility for the BS aspects. M never did. So we got s**t on us. Love is real Chuck
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And your thoughts and insights on the subject. It's nice that we have the opportunity to deconstruct how we got caught up in the Maharaji trip. Maybe we'll never fully understand how it happenned, but at least we're now free to examine it and can enjoy sharing what we're pondering as we go along. I think a big part of it is validation. We needed somebody to validate our spiritual longing, a manifestation of it. Isn't that what Maharaji was? His presense in the flesh, as the perfect master, was a validation of what we were feeling, that there is something perfect, something else that was just over the horizon that we weren't encouraged to seek by mainstream society, but for us was so important. Maharaji rejuvenated our hopes just by his very being. To many of us that something else is still important. It's just that Maharaji no longer represents it. He may have helped some people get closer to it because of what they believed him to be, but if not for that faith he wouldn't amount to anything by his own account.
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ocker: this post is interesting in reference to some of my earlier 'expremie questions'--what was source of the darshan experiences, etc. 'Normal though unusual human states of consciousness'--I think that's a key to how so many of us were sucked in. We are the magicians, and we owe it to selves and each other to be careful--as GM has not been. I remember seeing this pic in an old--from before the split of the family-- 'Divine Times' or something that an ashramie gave me when I was an aspirant in 1980. I knew that Mataji and 2 bros had 'left maraji'. As I saw the picture then, M looked like the only poised person--and Rajaji was the only one looking AT M. It all made sense. Hello to all who have spoken kindly in my direction (here in Arkansas, USA). I read here often even when not posting.
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