Robert Hallowitz MD

In the pre-Millenium rush to publicity, one premie MD impressed both the New York Times journalist (Ted Morgan) and the
Rolling Stone journalist Richard Levine. Their comments about him stood out in what were otherwise nearly 100% critical articles.
(The western mahatma, named Mahatma Saphlanand, also got a sympathetic press).

Unfortunately unless there is another Dr Robert Hallowitz, it appears
his life did not continue as he had confidently expected it to
at the times of these interviews in late 1973. Can anyone confirm that
the premie Dr Robert Hallowitz is the same Dr Robert Hallowitz whose
career ended in disgrace amidst convictions of sexual abuse and
cultism?

If he is then that makes two of Rawat's early "famous"
devotees, Hallowitz and Rennie Davis who went on to become gurus in
their own minds.
While Davis hasn't achieved the same notoriety hasn't he just taken
over the role of harbinger of the Millenium while replacing his worship
Prem Rawat with worship of himself?

Doctor's License Is Suspended

Sex, Drugs, `Cultism' Cited by Md. Agency

[FINAL Edition]

The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext)


Washington, D.C.

Author:

Amy Goldstein


Date:

May 1, 1993


Start Page:

D.03


Section:

METRO

Gaithersburg MD
physician Robert A. Hallowitz lost his medical license following
allegations that he had sex and used illegal drugs with several
patients and portrayed himself as the "embodiment of God" on a mission
to bring "light and love into the world" by fathering children.

A graduate of the
University of Rochester School of Medicine, [Robert A. Hallowitz] has
held a Maryland medical license since 1974. [Fred R. Joseph],
Hallowitz's attorney, said his client has lectured on chronic fatigue
syndrome across the country and was scheduled to be featured in a
report on the disease on the television show "48 Hours."

In
another case described in the documents, Hallowitz invited a man who
was a patient on midday golf outings, during which the doctor smoked
marijuana. In 1983, Hallowitz also began treating the patient's wife,
told the husband he was "cutting him off spiritually" and started
visiting the couple at home as often as five times a week.

For
the next seven years, the man remained downstairs during those visits,
while his wife and Hallowitz had sex in the bedroom, according to the
documents. During that period, the man's wife gave birth to two
children, who she and Hallowitz said had been fathered by the doctor,
according to the board's documents.

Dr. Robert Hallowitz is a 29-year-old neurophysiolegist and a
research associate at the Laboratory of Brain Evolution Behavior at the
National Institute of Mental Health in Washington. A short, intense,
bright-eyed man, he talks as if he were delivering a lecture. "In
March, 1973, I came into contact with Guru Maharaj ji. I had a
skeptical reaction; I couldn't accept him as a godhead. But with my
clinical background, I saw that something was really moving the
devotees in a positive direction. During a four month period I sat down
and talked with nearly 100 premies. The common denominator was that
they came from what we call the social dropouts. By all Establishment
Standards they had been living desperate lives, unproductive and
antisocial. I was impressed because I know that when encounter groups
and other forms of therapy deal with this type of despair, the recovery
rate is minute.

"It was visible on the faces of these premies that they were
experiencing a radiant and intense peace. And it was infectious; I
began experiencing the saure thing. I felt marvelous. I said, I don't
know who Guru Maharaj ji is, but he's giving a valid experience and I
want it. Since then, I've had experience so intense as to be beyond my
capacity to imagine, and if that's suggestion, it's very strong. I've
come to the point where I know there is a Supreme Being and He is one
with that 15-year-old boy."

Hallowitz is convinced that the guru's teaching is consistent
with recent brain research, and that meditation techniques provide a
way for man to control an imperfectly designed brain away from fear and
stress and toward pure thought and inner peace.

Because of his evolutionary inheritance, Hallowitz says, man is
burdened with a primitive orientation towards fear and survival, which
sets the tone of individual and institutional behavior, starts wars,
and destroys civilizations. Scientists are already studying the
physiological effects of meditation as a way out of this bind. They
have found decreased heart rates and oxygen consumption, increased
galvanic skin response and low-frequency alpha activity that may be
correlated with states of subjective relaxation.

Hallowitz believes that receiving knowledge from the guru
"involves a lowering of response to stressful situations, a heightening
of capacity for pure thought, a scaling down of body processes, libido,
appetites and sleep requirements - it changes the organism's
perspective of the environment; we no longer view the environment as
stressful, we are no longer draining our vitality. What I'm saying is
that meditation brings about physiological transformations that have
tremendous implications for our physical and emotional we11-being."

To skeptics, this attempt to connect meditation with advanced
brain researeh is but one more example of the guru's flimflam. One of
the most vocal skeptics is Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist and in
Houston to represent the scornfui old guard of the protest mövement. He
countered the "brain overhaul" theory with the "body snatcher" theory.

Later I have dinner with Bob Hallowitz, a 30-year old neurophysiologist
who received Knowledge last April, an event he describes as perhaps the
most magnificent experience in his life. I am puzzled and a bit shaken
by our conversation. Here is a man who clearly answered the Guru's call
to "give him your love and give him your minds," and he has such a fine
mind that I can't help thinking it may not have been an even trade.

Hallowitz, who has just strengthened his attachment to Guru
Maharaj Ji by becoming a vegetarian, orders three dinner salads and
remarks on the practical benefits of his new lifestyle. Rather than
require blind faith, he says, the Divine Light Mission offers an
experience, the Knowledge which every person can test for himself. As
we begin to eat, Hallowitz tells me about a little experiment he
carried out not long ago in which he offered up 20 peanuts to Maharaj
Ji by touching each one to his forehead, putting aside two that somehow
"didn't feel right." Afterward he de-shelled them all and found that
those two were rotten.

Presumably this is not the sort of experiment Hallowitz
performs in his research at the Laboratory o! Brain, Evolution and
Behavior of the National Institute of Mental Health, but he assures me
that his work there

also corroborates the effectiveness of the Knowledge. Scientists
investigating the human brain, Hallowitz explains, have developed a
theory about its evolution not unlike the superimposed strata of
geological time. According to this theory, the core of the human brain,
which includes the hypothalamus, resembles the brain of a reptile and
performs only instinctual responses necessary for survival. The next
layer, the limbic lobe, which developed at the time of the earliest
mammals, adds the element of memory. This is the behaviorist brain of
salivating dogs and rats in mazes, where survival-oriented responses
are capable of adjusting to past experience. These two older brains, in
conjunction with the endocrine system of glands, control such basic
human drives as hunger, fear, lust and anger. The third and most recent
layer, the neocortex, is the only part of the human brain capable of
abstract thinking.

Theoretically, a person who is sure of his continued existence
in one form or another, aware that he is part of a universal energy
flow, will be less controlled by the fight-flight syndrome programmed
into the older layers of the brain. According to Hallowitz, there is a
growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that one physiological
link between higher and lower consciousness is the pineal gland, which
was long thought to be a vestigial organ but might in fact turn out to
be the brain's master switch, the Third Eye of mystic tradition. The
pineal gland, this theory goes, secretes a hormone that inhibits the
action of the rest of the endocrine system, thus allowing human beings
a measure of independence from the older brains with their orientation
toward the basic values of survival. And what seems to happen during
meditation is that the secretion from the pineal gland increases,
allowing a person to exist at peace with himself and the world.

In his own life Hallowitz has seen the meditation work wonders.
A few weeks ago, he tells me, a shopping bag he was carrying broke as
he was leaving the supermarket and it hardly fazed him, although that
was just the kind of incident which would have sent him into a spinning
rage before he became a premie. He describes himself as having been an
intense compulsive person, quick to anger and bearing a large load of
self-hate. Like my friend Alan, he also searched for a unifying Truth,
which he failed to find in his biological studies or, earlier, in his
parents' reformed Jewish tradition.

A year ago he first heard about Maharaj Ji from a young chemist
at work who seemed to be a much happier person after becoming a premie.
Hallowitz eventually received Knowledge at the Washington D.C. ashram,
and after a month of diligent meditation, he had a dream-a new version
of a nightmare that had haunted him for years, in which he was always
killed in some gruesome manner. In the dream he was alone in a bare
white room with a much larger man waving a pistol at him and muttering,
"I'll kill you, you bastard." Finally the man placed the gun against
his temple and fired. At that moment Hallowitz experienced the full
power of the Knowledge as he had never experienced it before-an intense
white light that filled his head, a sound of celestial bells chiming in
exquisite harmony, the indescribably sweet fragrance of the Holy Nectar
and the vibration at the root of his being that is the Word-all this
accompanied by a feeling of "finally going home," of ultimate peace
beyond description.

Strengthened by this experience, Hallowitz began meditating
more intensively than ever mornings and evenings; this created constant
friction with his wife, who viewed his devotion to Guru Maharaj Ji as a
threat to their marriage and another in a long list of enthusiasms he
would pick up, only to drop weeks or months later. But Hallowitz feels
certain that he has finally found the Truth and has come to Millennium,
over his wife's bitter objections, hoping to ask Mata Ji how he can
resolve his marital problems and to talk with the Guru personally about
his future service in the Mission.

As I drive him back to the Houston ashram, he reads me a letter
he has written to Maharaj Ji explaining his research work and
requesting an interview. "l am crying warm tears of love to see and
talk with you," the letter concludes: "I would rather be no other place
than at your glorious feet." He points out a tear stain in the lower
left-hand corner of the letter.

A few days later the receptionist at my hotel hands me a note
from Bal Bhagwan Ji, who has evidently gotten wind of my conversation
with Hallowitz. It contains the results of a study done by a doctoral
candidate in psychology at the University of Colorado in which premies
experienced marked reduction in their pulse and respiration rates while
meditating. There is also a list of chapter-and-verse citations from
the Bible. The first one I turn to in my hotel Gideon is Genesis 32-30:
"And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: For I have seen God
face to face, and my life is preserved."