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Who could forget these classic scenes from the Wedding video. I certainly won't as watching that was probably the most embarassing thing I'd ever endured. Fat little Prem with his tummy poking out and Durga Ji with breasts threatening to knock him down doing Busby Berkely dance routines on the beach being filmed from above. Did they use a helicopter?
And proof positive that DECA wasn't all a huge useless waste of lives and energy. The 707 actually flew once at least. Cynthia did you see the flight? Did you sob tears of gopi joy? Did you pranam and kiss the tarmac?
"Leaving Your Lotus Fee-ee-ee-eet, Oh Where Would I Go?" Well I answered that question a long time ago and to paraphrase Charles Dickens Leaving Your Lotus Fee-ee-ee-eet is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; Oh Where Would I Go? to a
far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
Modified by ocker at Thu, Nov 16, 2006, 17:37:47
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The jet was test flown a few times, before and after the reconfiguration was completed, but I didn't work at the hangar so I never saw it actually take off. It was flown to Miami, after all. Ya can't tow a B707!  Much earlier than that, I specifically remember when a search was on for a non-premie pilot to drive the jet for Rawat, because he (Rawat) had just begun to work on his commercial/jet pilot rating and they needed a pilot licensed to fly a commercial-rated aircraft. The man they hired was a sweet, retired commercial pilot named Charles Clark who had a head of gray hair. I met him a couple of times when he came to DECA. This was at the first smaller warehouse so it was earlier on in the project. I was told that upon meeting Rawat that the two hit it off well (whatever that means). There were many ,many discussions about how Clark would view, accept, etc., Maharaji, based on the fact that he's the lord of the universe. Around the time the jet was completed in 1980, I was out of DECA and no longer privy to the goings-on there.
Modified by Cynthia at Fri, Nov 17, 2006, 07:54:21
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Yes but just cause it flew to Miami means it could fly out. Years of devoted work doesn't mean a gold-plated B707 can fly. And even if it was only the toilet that was gold-plated the plane may have sunk under the weight of premie expectations.
I don't know the details and I'm sure you can correct me but it seems that Rawat took hundreds of the most talented, hard-working and devoted members of his organisation and moved them to crummy hotels in Miami and got them to work and collect money for a pipe-dream fantasy of a flying hotel-propagation machine that was unfeasible and unnaffordable thereby sucking a huge amount of devotion and energy and potential growth out of his "mission" and then closed down the public shop shortly thereafter. Is this guy the most hopelessly incompetent incarnation of God ever known to man? Can you imagine how he'll go down in the avatar annals? I wish I could come up with a snappy one-liner. Jesus the ???, Buddha the ???, Prem the ???.
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It's strange, looking back, how much the time of the work on the motor home in Malibu, some years before, was echoed in the DECA project in Miami.
Premies worked for months turning Maharaji's already luxury motorhome into a mobile divine abode.
While it's unladen weight steadily went off the scale, Gold fittings and extras of every imaginable opulence were crafted or installed. It was pretty much finished when one Saturday morning, Malibu residents awoke Santa Anna hot, with the smell of burning brush in their nostrils and a growing dark cloud covering the sky.
By ten or eleven o'clock a line of up to 100ft high flames broke the skyline, dotted, all along the ridge line of the Santa Monica Mountains and like a war party of giant Apaches they came riding down at 60 miles an hour upon the coastal community.
That day it was every man and woman for themselves. Many ended up on the last few yards of the beach before the Pacific Ocean: if they were lucky; with their dogs and horses too.
The following morning premies were called up for service, through the smoking, blackened moonscapes: strange, fire triggered flowers already breaking the surface among the steaming cacti.
There were many austere and unreal sights that day, but one that sent a poignant shiver of "What wasted energy" through my bones: barely recognisable beside the smoking ruin of the model 'T' ford, was the now; no more than a foot or so high; charred chassis footprint of where the motor home once stood, it's tyres: but wire, its gold dials and fittings: melted away, back into the ground.
Lp
Modified by Saph at Fri, Nov 17, 2006, 19:36:01
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I remember hearing about those fires at the time and wondering if the Lord was ok. Great story.
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I remember hearing that after everything was scorched from the fire, the lawn, etc. was painted green to make it look nicer. Maybe it's an urban legend.
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I distinctly remember his satsang about painting the trees green as I'm a tree-lover who goes to Botanical Gardens, Arboreta and hikes to see famous trees whenever I get the chance. The Sequoias are my spiritual cathedral. So it was not something I could forget. What an ar_e-hole. He said it looked much better when the real green leaves came out. What a surprise!
Modified by ocker at Mon, Nov 20, 2006, 15:43:34
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I'm sure Cynthia (if she can face describing the horrors of DECA yet again) can give a much fuller answer. But the short answer is that the 707 was dead from day one - it was never going to be viable because it's engines could not meet the new environmental regimes that were springing up across the globe. No one on premie land could grasp the fact that not even the Lord himself possessed an unlimited right to pollute. As to the waste of energy (and lives) it seems to me that, that was all about 'control' - Prem playing the boss of the chocolate factory with premies his ever happy Umpaloompas. Nik
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