Ron Geaves and Prem Rawat's Claims of Divinity
Long time devotee of Prem Rawat aka Maharaji, Prof. Ron Geaves, has written a book relating Rawat to the 1970s Counter Culture and attempts to distance the young Rawat from the extravagant claims made his family, the administrators of his organisations and his rank and file followers.
Geaves has been on a crusade since 2002 to promote his guru and Perfect Master as a respectable and influential religious/spiritual leader. He has camouflaged this crusade in the guise of some academic papers and a book and has used the usual false arguments and evidence to create an untrue picture.
Yet each would emphasize experience as primary in the quest for the divine, even though their respective attitudes towards the ritual and mythic dimensions of religion would vary. In the teachings promoted by DLM, the authority of the master was paramount and the 'solitary sant' typology was regarded as divinity. Juergensmeyer states that the sant considers all religious authority as invalid with only one exception, that is, that of the 'devoted follower of the Lord, whose own achievements in spiritual matters enable him or her to serve as a model for others' (1991: 23). Gold points out that in sant discourse the 'holy man' of the sant tradition is considered to outshine even the major gods of the Hindu pantheon (1987: 86). In sant terminology, this type of teacher is given the title 'satguru' (the true guru) and has extraordinary transformative powers, primarily expressed as the ability to qualify his devotees for knowledge of the formless divine (ibid.). The guru in India is generally regarded as more accessible and trustworthy even than the gods (1987: 175) but can lead to the conviction among sants that the satguru is the highest incarnate being. This intense gurubhakti had resulted in many in India regarding Prem Rawat as an avatar of Krishna or Ram. These views were prevalent among the mahatmas and the family members of Prem Rawat and were inculcated by the early premies, especially those who visited India to meet the guru there, but there were very early signs that Prem Rawat wanted to focus on the experience on offer rather than Indian hagiographical and mythological interpretations of guruship. p 158
We have already mentioned Paul Schnabel's claim that the divinity of the guru is a standard element of Eastern religion, but when removed from its cultural context, and combined with the 'Western understanding of God as a father', what the difference between the guru's person and that which the guru symbolizes is lost and can result in a limitless personality worship (1982: 142).
Daniel Gold's in-depth study of the sant tradition focused on the sophisticated theology that has developed around the sant master and his/her relationship with the divine is more useful. He states, 'North Indian devotion, then, presents holy men and singular personalities as substantial beings who manifest channels of grace in the world' (1987: 25). The devotee gains access to such channels. Gold continues his analysis by arguing that the antinomian outlook of the 'solitary sant' leaves devotees only with the option to ?nd the source of the divine in the holy man alone (p. 31). He says, 'The disciple,
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moreover, could also recognize hidden links to the guru, knowing the guru as a being who manifested within him - a being ?nally one with the Formless Lord. The Sant could then stand as a channel of grace independent of both Hindu and Islamic heritages' (p. 31). In sant traditions, a focus develops on purifying, controlling or negating the 'mind stuff' through a yogic outlook towards spiritual life but it is combined with an intense devotion to the sant master that does not depend on a system of ritual (ibid.)
many followers had begun to take on a very strong exclusivist claim to salvation, combining an epistemology developed from certain devotional forms of Hinduism which contained ideals of monasticism, celibacy and vegetarianism and a range of Hindu-based customs and Christian expectations of a return of Christ at the end time. Together, these would create a powerful emotive epistemology of incarnation in regard to Prem Rawat. Hindu classical avatar (incarnational descent) doctrines with the common attribution of divinity to the guru and strong millennial hopes arising out of a countercultural wish for an end to 'straight society' would merge with Christian hopes of a messiah figure that had little to do with Indian traditions. All these developing practices and beliefs arising out of Hindu worldviews were encouraged by the senior members of Maharaji's family, especially his mother and eldest brother, and the visiting Indian mahatmas, who had taken on the leadership of the mission during Prem Rawat's childhood and had been endowed with varying degrees of divinity and holiness by followers. It is dfficult to ascertain the degree to which they encouraged the occultural elements creeping in from the counterculture, and it is also difficult to ascertain Prem Rawat's feelings towards the powerful religious movement developing around him except that it is possible to surmise that he had a degree of ambiguity concerning what was unfolding in his name. Now reaching adulthood, he was beginning to assert his own vision to the consternation of some family members and the Indian mahatmas. page 172
I began this book with the question to what degree can Prem Rawat be described as a 'New Age' guru? The degree to which counterculture individuals took with them a 'fairly rigid set of ideas about his divinity and the coming of the new age' (p. 199) and appropriated a 'solitary sant' worldview to their own in the early 1970s would suggest the answer would appear to be affirmative. Yet Downton also notes that Prem Rawat's teachings were marked by an emphasis on giving up or challenging pre-existing religious beliefs and concepts (p. 199). p 174
Ron's book is even worse than that of another long time crony/minion of Rawat's, Glen Whitaker's "For Christ's Sake." Geave's book is a puff piece disguised in the language of arcane academia but some real research about Rawat and the Counter Culture had already been done and written back when it was happening: