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....Your face is like the sun Giving light To shine on everyone. There were several songs on that theme Ocker,you ask "Have premies ever openly discussed this aspect of the speaker?" I don't remember ever hearing premies say ANYTHING bad about Prem's "physical form". However, I surprised myself at the last programme I attended (2002).I went to buy a new photo of the lord to keep in my purse....and I couldn't find one that wasn't hideous. I was still a premie though....and blamed the photographer 
Modified by Lexy at Wed, Mar 22, 2006, 15:47:37
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...he was fat on the love of his premies.
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like living off the fat of the donations he conned people out of.
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Modified by Nigel at Wed, Mar 22, 2006, 16:41:51
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I DO remember Rawat banging on through the 80's about how premies (or people in general) have such concepts about what the "perfect Master", "Lord" or whatever, should look like! One of his favorite "stawmen" was the idea of the master as old, poor, wearing robes, bare feet and such. As if you'd have to fit that idea to be able to spout wisdom! He loved to knock that one! And of course we lapped it up! Of course the "Perfect Master" of our time wouldn't look like that! He's be big, robust, powerful, wearing a business suit, "professional", etc etc etc. Looking like a ceo. (He wasn't one, of course!). As to the pimples and overweight--I too NEVER heard any premie discuss or even mention that. I DID hear a critic of premies describe him as "a fat slug", which shocked me so much at the time, but still, after that when I looked at the "holy" pictures, there was a tiny corner of sanity in me somewhere that said, "Hmmm....". It didn't quite make it to the thought, "maybe he's right". But I never forgot the remark. It went underground for a couple of decades of bliss and play, of course. I worked hard to NOT be bothered by his appearance, because after all, who am I to say what the Lord should look like?! And anyway, maybe he was playing games with our concepts? Just accept! Just surrender! What a lot of hard work it was, really! I feel exhausted just thinking about it. Good job I'm sitting down while I type this. Actually, I find that I don't really care WHAT a person looks like if they are honest, considerate, a friend, or just good fun. But it is a bit different in the case of someone who claims to be above it all and to have found and realised something that's supposed to transform our lives. Dontcha think? ~Shelagh
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I was told that the perfect master has to have robust(read enourmous) body because he is taking all the bad karma from premies and the world. That's why he had so many pimples etc. All the wordly things he does in the world is for us. So even the best of things is not good enough.He should get the best of everything 'in this world'. Anne Johnson explained all that to me.
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Hi Jethro! Ann Johnston (or was it Johnson?) was my initiator into the techniques, too! What a lot of wisodom I didn't get from her! I remember at one program where it seemed to me that Rawat was saying how beautiful and powerful we all were! (I liked that, needed to hear that!). Then I talked with Ann afterwards and her take on it all was that we weren't good enough to be walked on by him! I was stunned. Were we at the same event? It was probably another "drip" for me, but very swiftly and easily disposed of. (leave no room for that nasty "doubt-maker). You know how it was! I wish Ann well. I hope she's doing all right. But when I look back on my interactions with her, it seemed she had a particular need to debase herself that can't be healthy! I don't know her whole story and probably shouldn't even be discussing her here. It's just another example, really, of how off-the-wall we ALL were as paid-up premies! All right, some of us!  ~Shelagh
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He most famous 'satsang' was when she told us that one day she saw her son(she had totally left her family for prem) and instead of saying something, 'Hello darling, long time no see' <with a hug or two>, she closed her eyes and went to her true home (rememberance of holy name). I.e she totally ignored him. She was very proud of the example she set and is responsible for breakup of many families. I also saw her rip apart people for being bad devotees especially single moms. In her day as initiator, she totally abused her position.
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The thing with Ann was her naive self-perception of being an uber-devotee similar to Mirabai and therefore knowing best how to serve and devote oneself to Maharaji. Ann routinely busied herself with trying to correct other premies' devotional behavior. Everything from the correct display and arrangement of Goober photos to ensuring that the absolute minimum was spent on ashram resident needs and the maximum sent to you know who. Ann was a married middle class house wife with at least one child when she abandoned her family in order to dedicate her all to Rawat. If I'm not mistaken Rawat knew that and sanctioned her "sacrifice". She had a decidedly ascetic and "pure" take on things and would dress everyday all in white and insisted that that the ashram be all white with minimal furniture. As you might have guessed Ann was my housemother (I cringe at that old term) and was the prototypical cultie. I've heard of many stories from her initiator days where she wouldn't hesitate to criticize people and try to correct them with her spiritual concepts. Of course she thought she was serving her Lord and showing the true path straight and narrow - only she pissed off and upset a lot of people in the process. Religions and cults are rife with those who think they are the chosen ones with the "correct" understanding. Apparently she is still serving him by doing the Rawat family laundry or some such. Here is someone who dramatically severed her ties to family and sacrificed all of her personal life in order to serve the person she thought was the Lord. Rawat won't tell her that it was all a mistake, that she should perhaps get a life, or try to reclaim her old one, so the charade continues.
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After so thoroughly surrendering herself to her master there is simply no going back - so very, very, sad.
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Yes, she was reportedly walking up to the residence each day to do his laundry, but I read on an earlier forum that Rawat sent her away. The discussions at the time were that she had nothing and nowhere to go, and expressed the hope that she would be OK. If anyone knows what happened to her they could post here or email me at epowebmaster@yahoo.co.uk.
John.
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Hi Shelagh,
I have to say that it does bother me when people make fun of other people for their physical appearance. This is something that even bothered me when I first read the forum here. I mean there is a lot of things to trash prem about, but being fat is just so cheap and arbitrary. I have a really good girlfriend who is very fat and has suffered her whole because of it. And Germany isn't like the States where like everyone is fat these days. She gets made fun of by grownups even just walking down the street. But she is otherwise an incredibly remarkable person. And I guess her fatness is alot of what she is.
Well I don't want to go all righteous about this though. What I really wanted to say was that part of the ex-premie pastime of making fun of Rawat's appearance is a reaction to the premie mythology of portraying him as being so beautiful. While his physical appearance certainly has nothing to do with whatever spiritual or otherwise talent he might have to offer, this idea of worshipping his form is pretty bizarre.
I guess if one wanted to consider that has part of, even a critical aspect of, the process of mind kneading of cult indoctrination, I would go along with that. Prem and his coterie are brilliant at inverting the structural basis and values that form a vulnerable neophyte's perception. When this architecture is first softened, it can be reformed into the shape of a cultee mindset. This is continually reaffirmed and strengthened through the process of 'keeping in touch', whereas the initial softening has now obviously become 'the keys'.
A tragic side-effect of this procedure, perhaps even the worst part of it, is that the cultees moral and value center is lost and in the most extreme cases destroyed. The Anne Johnston example above illustrates this well.
I am continually reminded of this effect when I witness the corrupt behavior of cultees performing their online service. And sadly I must also think back to when I was in that position in my young ashram days and behaved with the same blind Stepford wife obedience.
Juan talked about it nicely below, when he mentioned some HBO tv show. You slowly, perhaps without hardly realising it, cross one boundary at a time and after a while (five or six keys) you have your head screwed on upside down. You have entered your own private kali-idaho.
Worshipping an ugly fat guy, believing in the kaliyuga, hating your mind, learning to mistrust cultural authority, are some of those steps. That is why in the end you have these weird stories of wife swapping, affairs with daughters-in-laws, child abuse and the very many behavioral abberations that are posted about on the forum from time to time.
dant, who took his intellectual pill this morning. Sorry, it won't happen again.
Modified by aunt bea at Fri, Mar 24, 2006, 04:10:35
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Hi ABI agree with you about finding it distasteful to laugh at anyone's body image, and that includes altered images of Maharaji. I have posted about it below. -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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Hi Dant and Mike! Thanks for your sobering, heads-up, let's not get into body-image bashing posts here--simply because there is so much ELSE of real significance that is really what leaving the cult is all about. Stuff that is truly dangerous and needs to be exposed! I think part of my indoctrination into the premie mindset in the early 80's included a certain emphasis on how we looked, however. This could have been my own agenda at that time too, admittedly--but there was all this talk about looking beautiful and sparkly, and everyone was into fasts and colonics and being vegetarian and taking echinacea for colds, and all that, and talking about someone looking "evolved"--you could tell just by their physical appearance! Much of the action seemed to include congreagating at the local healthfood store! It was an assumption that if you were on the right spiritual path (and this was the right one!) then your body would transform too. I bought it, hook line and sinker, because I wanted to look great and feel healthy too, of course! But I also remember Rawat himself saying that knowledge was not about vegetarianism. So what to think? It was all very confusing. Much of the confusion coming from premies just trying to make sense of things in their own way--but much of it coming from mixed messages from the top, undoubtedly! So glad life doesn't have to be so complicated any more! I'm doing healthy things now because I want to be healthy! Simple as that! Best, Shelagh
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We're not talking about laughing about anybody's "body image", whatever that means, we're talking about actually saying what most newbies would be far too polite and embarassed to say: This guru who is talking about inner peace, etc, etc looks incredibly unhealthy and grossly obese. I'm a fat guy myself but I'm not claiming to able to reveal and inspire something universal, assuage a universal thirst or reveal something more than meditation - thereby denigrating everybody who practises meditation, etc.
When you first associate with premies, even these days, they're playing the "I have more bliss than you" game and because they're nice people and sincere most of the people they introduce to Rawat's Knowledge will be far too polite to say the obvious and ask the difficult questions and if they hang around long enough they will model themselves on the information they're given through the "Keys" and through seeing what the premies believe and they'll just accept that Rawat's isn't a gross, mean-spirited, shallow and devious person despite superficial appearances.
There is no need to laugh at his obesity, though I have no problem with people who do, but I think we should be like the innocent little kid in the parade who said "The emperor has no clothes and by golly he's fat and ugly so why are these people carrying on as if he's dressed in Armani and beautiful?"
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Mike,
I generally agree about not denigrating another's body image. I work selling high quality supplements, and we frequently get women calling us in tears because their doctors are ridiculing them for sitting in front of the TV and eating chips. They tell me that is not true and that they have all the classic symptoms of low thyroid. Unfortunately, the test for low thyroid, TSH test, is notoriously inaccurate. The doctors only knowing what they know send these women away to suffer needlessly unless they can find a good alternative like what we have.
Back to Rawat and his body image, I feel he is a different kettle of fish, so to speak(and a stinky one at that). It is not the weight that bothers me. It is the glaringly obvious dissipation of his life energy as his excesses take their toll on his face and form. From all that we have learned on the ex-premie forum, he is perhaps one of the most addicted people I know of. I lived 10 years in the ashram following his dictates of abstinence while he took all our money and INDULGED in every way possible. I mean really! a $10,000 sensor on his patio grill? Has he no shame? And now as he is aging, this all shows on his face. I have said this before here: My very wise mother says, when you are young you have the face God (or nature) gives you, but as you age you get the face you deserve. There are homely people in my life that shine with their heart's love. Rawat is UGLY TO THE BONE because that's where his ugliness starts. Karen
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I used to suppress my surprise at seeing pimples on his face in the 70s. He's fat and he doesn't carry it well because he's so damned short. Pudgy, wudgy Prem. I think premies' imaginations made him seem so much bigger than he really is -- that sure was the case with me. He was up on a pedestal during darshan line and that made him seem so, so, big. Most people tower over him (I did) and whenever he's been thinner, he's downright petite. But he makes up for it with his very odd-shaped, big fat weird-looking head. The airbrush has been his friend, that's for sure. And I'll be the first to say it: He has some ugly, ugly looking feet and toes. I can't believe I ever, well, yuck! A face only a mother could love.
Modified by Cynthia at Thu, Mar 23, 2006, 13:46:57
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A face only a mother could love
Not post-Marolyn she couldn't. 
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Hi Cynthia! Your post reminded me of the time when I was in close proximity to said personage. He was standing in an aisle very close to where I was, chatting with--I think it was Ira Woods--and I remember thinking, he's so small! Up until that time, I'd only ever seen him up on stages with carefully managed lighting, props etc. so it was a shock! Also, he wasn't golden. He just looked like a small man. The last time I saw him (Amaroo 2001) was a shock as well--because he was in a tent, and he looked grey. With slit eyes. That WAS a drip all right. I cried when I emerged, but not for the reasons any watching premies might have thought. ~Shelagh
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"So small", "looked grey", "slit eyes". Are you suggesting that Rawat is an alien? Kabir
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That wouldn't be fair to aliens, Kabir!
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Once I saw him standing beside him and my mom said, within his earshot she was not a premie, "he's so short" and of course that is what my mind was thinking! And then at a festival, not sure how long before I left, I went through darshan and he just looked so bored, and obvisously did not KNOW who I was, and my mind was screaming cult cult cult.....and I went out and sobbed. Same thing, the watching premies looked at me like I was overwhelmed with bliss when I was overwhelmed with self loathing for the awful things I was thinking. I don't think at that point I was conciously entertaining that what I was thinking might be true, I just figured I was a horrible person.
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The first time I saw him was going through darshan, I figured that when I 'received Holy Breath' I would experience something and when I kissed his feet I would soar into some cosmic consciousness. Nothing happened. After the cart went by (it was outdoors) I looked at him and thought "You're a con man." If I had just trusted myself.
Years later after the ashrams were closed I remember burning a picture of him.
Some years later I "finally" got to backstage service. When I saw him I was particularly unimpressed. One time he brushed by a partially opened door looking annoyed. Another time he asked about me "Does he know to get the door?" and then later was being coached/filled in by someone before going into a "Knowledge review". And yes, short, and he just seemed ordinary. Later I got my second chance to open the door for him. I saw an exchange between him and Joan Apter, there was friction, she seemed disapproving, but he just shrugged her off. I didn't really catch, or maybe didn't want to catch, was it was about. So I opened the door for him and he smiled, yes, he likes being waited on hand and foot. I got tears in my eyes and was thinking what a good premie I was, not like that Joan Apter. Of course, how much did I really know about him? I also remember seeing Marolyn walked hurredly and looking annoyed. Major drips.
Years later I saw him at Amaroo in a jeep talking with premies, lapping up the 'devotion'. Again he just seemed ordinary. I noticed that I didn't feel devotion for him and wondered why the premies were fauning over him. I guess I was also wondering "What am I doing here?"
For me freeing myself from the cult was a gradual process that sometimes went the other way. I had left at least once before the final break but wasn't really free.
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G, that was great stuff....... thanks for posting it.I wonder why the LOTU requires "coaching" before a K review.... doesn't he KNOW everything about EVERYONE in the room already?
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Tears were often evident at darshan - those occasions when the (now ex-) Lord lowered himself enough to allow his "students" (as they're now called) to kiss his feet.Is this to be a typical example of the operation of the new "academies" that the UK taxpayer will be funding? Ultimately, somebody's arse is going to be licked!
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