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Like Homer's!
Modified by LP at Wed, Jun 28, 2006, 05:46:21
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The significance of the 'Golden Doughnut' within the iconography of the Rawat cult derives from the commonly experienced image that appears to those who practise the 'light' technique of meditation as prescribed by Prem Rawat. Most typically it appears as a bright disc with a black central hole set against the background of black that is the usual visual phenomenon seen when the eyes are closed. There is no evidence that the golden doughnut is anything other than of physiological origin. This is nevertheless part of what Rawat claims to be the secret of 'inner peace'. It is also part of what Rawat's students are forbidden to talk about. Nik
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This is from a 1988 movie in which Prem Rawat uses the words "Guru Maharaji" in his Hindi satsang and the movie has the logo Guru Maharaj Ji prominently displayed. Does anybody know if he had actually changed the techniques in India by then or to this day? If Rejoice was in 1987 when he changed the techniques and the instructions around the West he would have had quite some difficulty giving "Knowledge Reviews" to the hundreds of thousands of Indian premies by 1988.
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Shine a light off his pointy little head, which he refuses to "powder," and this is what you get  He needs a good makeup person!
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Hi Ocker, That is too funny! It's got to be a joke right? Alright then... this is me meditating on the light without showing the secret technique. Darn, now I'm getting hungry for donuts. I'm going for glazed... Hilltop
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Brilliant! Thanks Hilltop. LOL.
Modified by LP at Wed, Jun 28, 2006, 18:29:02
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Thanks LP, Your a Great contributor to this forum. That's for sure! Me? Well, I like to lighten things up when I can... Hilltop
Modified by Hilltop at Wed, Jun 28, 2006, 20:53:24
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They are screen captures from an Elan Vital video. I'll get a capture of the title if you feel the need for confirmation.
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Hi Ocker, No, I believe you! It's just so outrageous seeing that is all. I should know better by now, the outlandish things Prem Rawat has said and done over the years in order to pro'pig'ate himself. I never seen this one. It's too funny for words really. But in reality is quite sick and not funny at all. And I thought I had seen it all! Yikes for sure! On your side... Hilltop
Modified by Hilltop at Thu, Jun 29, 2006, 01:15:32
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Kinda like those cartoon characters......... If so, he didn't "eat" a stick of cartoon dynamite, it was a cartoon nuke!
Modified by NAR at Fri, Jun 30, 2006, 12:13:31
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Hi Nar, You wouldn't believe all the humorous things that I've saved over the years about Prem Rawat and his mind abusing cult from the internet, along with a few of my own. I hope to someday post them all somewhere because they are that good. Ask Frederic, Roger, and Cq they know what I'm talking about. If only I could post them all. What fun! Cartoon Charactors? Prem Rawat is almost too easy!
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Play, as you lose your balls. It might be better to do a tilt!
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Yegads! I have to be grateful for the Time zones, the way it's set up, I get up, have my coffee and find that Hilltop has been busy in my night.
lol Lol LOL , there is no better way to start the day.
Thankyou for your courage and determination to find, and post here Hilltop, I know it's not in everybody's taste. You can't please every body all the time. What pleases one displeases another.
Let me tell you your innocence shows through: alongside your acute perception, brilliant archive skills and obvious hours of dedicated work, and to check your email sometimes!
Lp
And did I forget?
Thankyou.
Modified by LP at Sat, Jul 01, 2006, 05:27:21
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Hi LP, Here's another one that I think is funny. I'll probably give the humor thing a rest out of respect for the forum. Plus...I don't want to offend the people who may come here to read looking for answers to their questions. I've saved a few hundred of these same kind of posts. Thank You for being open to this type of humor. And Thank You for your kind words! I have to get my email sorted out because I haven't used it in a long time. Hopefully soon. Best Thoughts... Hilltop
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For years I have been wondering why so many people saw haloes around SSB's head. The strange thing is that these sightings were not confined to devotees. If that was the case then these sightings could have been explained by wishful thinking and excessive devotion and imagination. Here is one example in which the author Narayana Kasturi described in his official biography/hagiography the experience of the American follower John S. Hislop, "Another time, in Bombay, at Dharmakshetra while Baba was narrating a story to illustrate a point, I was amazed to find a circular blaze of halo around His head." http://s-a-i.info/wisdom/books/sss/s1038.html
It was a relief for me to find out that similar observations or experiences were made by the followers of and visitors to Maharaji. "Buckley and Galanter (1979), for example, reported that 'light' was often seen by potential recruits to the Divine Light Mission, a cult that was led by the very youthful Guru Maharaj Ji. Potential recruits would be invited to meetings in which members would 'deliver satsang' - accounts of their own religious experiences. New recruits might experience light and warmth, which would be seen as a validation of the truth of the accounts they were listening to. Subsequent incorporation into the group involved feelings of acceptance by other members, purpose in life, and the regular practice of meditation which (temporarily at least) gave feelings of peace." from Kate M. Loewenthal The Psychology of Religion One World Publications 2000 ISBN 1-85168-212-0 page 50 citing Buckley and Galanter 1979 Mystical experience, spiritual knowledge and a contemporary ecstatic religion in British Journal of Medical Psychology 52, 281-289
Andries
Modified by Andries at Wed, Jun 28, 2006, 18:41:17
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In the early days, I sometimes saw light around Rawat, and sometimes around premies in satsang. One time I happened to meet M, and saw nothing but his face surrounded by light. His wife was there, and asked me to help her with something, but I didn't know, I was told later. I was too busy indulging in the light thing.
I think those kind of experiences are the things that keep people hooked, or the more usual 'bliss' at an event. It all depends on how you interpret the experinces though...
To see haloes, I had to be in a certain mind space, and look in a certain way. If I wanted to, I could see normally at those times. I couldn't choose to see the haloes though. I don't go to that mind space any more - it was kind of blank. I just regard the whole thing as no more than a physiological curiousity now, and there are plenty of those, like when you are a kid, sometimes getting hit by that compulsion to step on each crack on the pavement.
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New recruits would certainly experience warmth during Australian sumers as I don't recall any air conditioning in a the early satsang halls. Seeing halos and other light effects was an everyday event for me at satsang and I am a really non-magical sort of guy. As pure concentration was one of the desired characteristics of people at satsang I am quite sure it is a combination of individual personality and concentration, the "depth" or "strength" of the shared feeling on the night and reaction to the person talking. It didn't necessarily happen with people you particularly felt sympatic to either. On the other hand I never saw it with Rawat but then I was always a long way back and could hardly see him.Fear not Andries. There is nothing specially divine about SSB that made people see this effect. His divinity is proven not be halos but by those showers of vibhuti that only he can produce out of those vases, oh, and of course vomiting upthose lingams, that's the real test of GodMan and then being short and overwight like that other incarnation, Prem Rawat.
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Hi Ocker, Thanks, I was very confused by the many testimonies about haloes around SSB, a typical characteristic of saints. With regards to the by Loewenthal/Buckley/Galanter quote that I cited, I did not realize that the light was not just seen around Rawat but also around other satsang givers until you mentioned it. Giving satsang by others than the guru also exists in the SSB movement, though they are called lectures, experiences with SSB, or speeches, but they are not so frequent as they were in the DLM. (At least as far as I can see this from my reading about the DLM). The chief communal sadhana in the SSB movement is singing bhajans (incl. Arathi/Aarti/Arthi) and to a lesser extent study circles in which literature by and about SSB is studied as well as the scriptures of the world religions. In the SSB movement the term satsang means simply good company, not confined to SSB followers, that the serious sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) should always seek. Bad company, such as criminals, leads to bad thought and habits. I cannot imagine how such a sighting can occur and how it looks. I never had something like that. Did you know that it was subjective and if so how did you find out? Andries
Modified by Andries at Fri, Jun 30, 2006, 16:58:15
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Did I know it was subjective? Well I knew that not everyone else necessarily saw or felt it at the same time in the same way. We'd chat amongst ourselves to a certain extent about these things or people might say it in satsang. We had a phrase "he/she really lit up the room" and it wasn't just metaphorical. And I have no idea who 13 is or where he/she came from but his/her experience seems much the same.
But even then and in retrospect it wasn't really a big deal. For myself, I can't stress too much the importance of concentration and the others present. You could sit on the floor in the front row every night and really have no idea what anyone else was doing but it really seemed that the whole room fed off the intensity of the speakers and the intensity of the listeners. I'm not sure if 'intensity' is even the right word, it was a long time ago.
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>I can't stress too much the importance of concentration and the others present< a kind of collective act of self hypnotism is how I recall it. I think those of us living on a low protein/high carbohydrate diet and meditating many hours each day, got used to 'seeing' all sorts of weird stuff whether our eyes were open or closed. Nik
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Yes I think my 'concentration' and your 'self-hypnosis' are very close to being the same thing. I was a family person / manual worker so I didn't go on any low protein diet though switching to vegetarian undoubtedly lowered the protein level somewhat. It's funny how you don't usually hear of living in a DLM ashram being much like the incredibly peaceful and serene, focussed and enjoyable life that one imagines an ashram should be like. Looking after the kids in the back room of satsang you could see some pretty weird stuff at times
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Entirely subjective, and not a big deal. It just takes a certain kind of attention. There seemed to be no benefit to it. I used to think that people with haloes must be saints of some kind, but once I started seeing haloes myself, I found I could see them around most people who gave 'satsang', and most people in the room, if they didn't object to me staring a little.
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13, thanks. I have never seen such haloes and I do not know what kind of attention is necessary. I have only experienced subjective visual distortions very rarely. Andries
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I have only experienced subjective visual distortions very rarely.
I'm sure you've seen those 3D posters which became popular 15 yrs or so ago. An apparently meaningless field of coloured blotches, when looked at in a certain way, reveals itself to be a picture of a tree or an aeroplane or whatever. It's almost impossible to explain to someone who doesn't get it, just how to see it.
In the same way, I suspect the phenomenon of seeing light around objects has something to do with both the long term effects of doing the 3rd eye yoga technique which is a part of Rawat's 'knowledge', & the unusual combination of excitement, calm, & concentration, which is the mental state of the guru's audience.
I know what 13 means, but as I have no desire to spend the next year with him on a Scottish Island, as an involuntary guest of HM Govt, I won't go into it in any detail.
Now that military helicopter pilots can fire onto what they see with their heads turned, I'm sure that the designers of those systems would like to know how to blind by the light.
It is rocket science.
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'I know what 13 means, but as I have no desire to
spend the next year with him on a Scottish Island, as an involuntary
guest of HM Govt, I won't go into it in any detail.'
Sorry, I don't know what you mean! ?
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My apologies for leading you down one of my mental rabbit holes.
Remote & uninhabited Scottish islands are often used in fiction & sometimes in fact as places where the Govt can conduct secret experiments. I was jokingly alluding to the uses which the RAF in particular has put into research on the psychology of perception.
I don't know why I expected anyone to understand..........must've been pissed.
ps
On rereading this I realise it isn't much clearer. I give up.
Modified by PatD at Sun, Jul 02, 2006, 11:37:06
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So, his head didn't actually explode? Pity.
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