I was married to a dedicated premie for 20 years until 2006. I recently moved to a new and small home and have been going through my stored junk. I found some old hard drives which contain some of the documents of the Gold Coast Elan Vital community, in which my ex-wife was a local contact and prime mover, from the period 1998-2006. Some periods are better representsed than others but there are enough documents to give a good impression of their activities, the cost and the results. It provides confirmation of what many former members of Divine Light Mission and Elan Vital already agree upon. From the time Maharaji dropped the 'Guru' from his title and the Krishna costumes and the crowns and other Divine regalia and claims of Godhood circa 1984 he has failed to gain any significant numbers of new followers in "the West." In 1998 he began a new phase in his career in which he made serious attempts to get his existing followers to succeed in 'propagation' as he called it (ie recruitment) using videos of his speeches shown in small venues with limited but increasing advertising to attract new and interested people. He tried having the PWKs (ie People With Knowledge) "trained" to improve their recruitment skills, co-operation and obedience, he tried inspiring them to attract people while having them use only his speeches to fan any interest. They were to use prepared scripts and methods and not try to personally convince anyone.

In this community the number of PWKs varied from 40 to 150 over that time. Six to twenty or so (not always the same people) were dedicated enough to arrange and pay for the public viewing of videos of Rawat's speeches, another 25 attended (semi-)regularly and donated towards the costs and the rest appeared if M., aka the Speaker aka Maharaji and later Prem Rawat, was going to be in Australia or if Elan Vital had come up with some spurious meaningful event in M's career to celebrate. The documents contained some snide remrks about these freeloaders. Amongst the documents were monthly financial and statistical statements from calendar years 1998, 2002, 2003, financial year 2004-05 and some months from financial year 2005-06. They had annual expenditure of $10,000 in 2002-03.

These statistics facsimiles below are of the spreadsheets used by the group to record the data and send it the National Co-ordinators (or Contacts) on their First Class™ Intranet. Maharaji wanted the number of participants of 3 groups of people attending be recorded i.e. not the number of individuals but the number of attendees. The first and largest was the People With Knowledge, those who had been instructed in his techniques of meditation and were supposedly regularly using them (PWKs), those who had been told about the supposedly positive effects of this practice and following Maharaji's guidelines and were there to learn moe (Guests) and those who were attending these events regularly (Aspirants) with a view to being instructed themselves. There was a lengthy process involved in this aspirantship but it mainly required attending these events often and for many months.

In the first 6 months of 1998 the statistics for the number of people attending the local community video 'events' (at some point in time the term 'program' had been replaced by 'event' in Elan Vital terminology) were much the same as they were 8 years later in early 2006. The major difference was the number of video events being held each month. There were far more in 1998 than there were in the later years for which we have the numbers. By 2002 the number of video events per month had halved, by 2004/5 there were 1/3 of the number of events and that remined the same into 2006. This was due to financial pressures that the PWK communities were under. There were not enough PWKs prepared to support, attend and finance these video events that Maharaji had ordained as the sole source of propagation ie attracting new converts. They went from an average of 25 events per month in 1998 to 8 per month in 2006.

These averaged figures don't mean there was only 1 or 2 guests and/or aspirants during that year, only that an average of 1 or 2 or none would go to each video event. Similarly, there was an average of 12 PWKs at each event. So these were small numbers but getting together and interpersonal contact with guests and aspirants was frowned upon. Maharaji had given specific instructions that only by listening to his speeches could the aspirants' "thirst" be created.

It seems that Maharaji grossly overstated the power of his satsang and his appeal to others. In 1999 his 'students' had paid thousands of dollars to hear him say "people were very open to Knowledge, that people were very open to me and I really don't think that I have ever felt that that has changed. That people are still very open and when they listen and what they hear they're just as fascinated by it as they were when I was a little boy." He was quite sure: There is a lot of people out there that are willing to listen to the introduction to Knowledge and wanting to receive Knowledge." The PWKs were doing what he demanded but the results were not what he was sure they would be. Who was to blame?

The actual overall cost of running the community's propagation activities - publicly showing Maharaji's videos - was about $10,000 pa not including the personal costs in money and time and the community payments to Visions for the creation of the material and the rights to show them publicly, which wasn't fully documented. The payments' names seemed to change: "Screening Fees", "Propagation Fund," "Broadcasts and Materials Fund" and the "Keys Fund." There was a lot of travel to the venues and chair shifting and flyer and brochure displaying and MC and Ushers arranging and MC-ing and ushering. Of course there was an enormous amount of discussion and documentation both within the community and within Elan Vital on the First Class intranet and lots of reporting.

On first glance at these figures it might appear that there were around 2,000 premies in this community. The number of times people visited an event were recorded, not the number of separate individuals, so to get an accurate average number the sum of visits must be divided by the number of events. I have calculated and added the average figures to get some idea of the real involvement. Spurious statistics is the Rawat way. They must always appear to be increasing. The local organisation kept mailing lists and discussions amongst themselves as to how many people were involved in their activities. Of the people on the Elan Vital mailing list, about 15% of the PWKs were involved in "doing service," 30% had regular involvement and willing to make financial donations and the others could be seen on "special occasions" and usually made no financial payments unless it was demanded to a festivity or a special broadcast that required payment for entry.

The 6 - 15 or so who were doing service - propagating the (SELF-)KNOWLEDGE - by arranging and paying for these videos to be shown publicly in rented halls and rooms an average of 11 or 12 times a week for 12 months had ½ of a guest and an average of 1½ aspirants at each "event". I could find no evidence that anyone actually "received Knowledge" though there was mention of an initiator at IRCC having a Knowledge Session. There were 4 or 5 international initiators visiting through that period and a couple of home-grown ones.

From an initial high number of aspirants attending the video events in the first half of 2002, numbers steadily dropped until in the second half of 2002 they were negligible. There is no evidence that all these aspirants were initiated and became dedicated PWKs. The number of people attending their first or first few video events remained low and did not seem to increase aspirant numbers. This doesn't mean there was only 1 or 2 aspirants during that year, only that only 1 or 2 would go to each video event. It was quite a long process and even before "the Keys" came in some aspirants' took year before being 'instructed' and so many aspirants lost inspiration, aspiration and respiration without seeing the Divine Donut.

The cost for each new premie must have been very high and its no wonder Rawat was so paranoid and desperate to have everything set up immaculately in a desperate wish that new initiates wouldn't just blow away with the breeze. This community was too poor to rent a special hall and buy special chairs but they did better than most local Australian communities and were always being praised by the honchos. $10,000 passed through their bank account in 2000-03. I wasn't paying a lot of attention at the time, it was all too boring and pointless, and I have a lot more sympathy for my ex-wife now.

The financial year 2004-05 records show a similar pattern to that starting in 2002. Lack of finance had reduced the events from 12 a month to 8 and these still attracted 0 to 2 guests each event, not necessarily the same guests and the same number of aspirants from a pool of aspirants of unknown number. Those people involved in organising these events (a pool of 10 to 20 PWKs) knew who these people were and how many but these figures were not recorded, not publicly at least.

As in former years there was a lot of time, energy and money spent in attracting very few new people to finish their aspirantship and hopefully become dedicated followers of Maharaji's and become part of the process and part of the financial support for Elan Vital and Maharaji himself and his family - see (the Elan VitalGold Coast Local Community Event Statistics Financial Years 1998 - 2006. There was a special PWK only Fund Raising event in April and 77 PWKs came and there was a profit of $995, this has affected the stats slightly.

The 15 or so who were doing service - propagating the (SELF-)KNOWLEDGE - by arranging and paying for these videos to be shown publicy in rented halls and rooms an average of 11 or 12 times a week for 12 months had ½ of a guest and an average of 1½ aspirants at each "event". I could find no evidence that anyone actually "received Knowledge" though I recall there was an initiator at IRCC having a session. There were 4 or 5 international initiators visiting through that period and a couple of home-grown ones.

From an initial high number of aspirants attending the video events in the first half of 2002, numbers steadily dropped until in the second half of 2002 they were negligible. There is no evidence that all these aspirants were initiated and became dedicated PWKs. The number of people attending their first or first few video events improved slightly on the prior years. There were no records kept in the local community about the results of any possible initiations. By 2006, the Keys process had been introduced and this would hve begun to lower the numbers of aspirants attending public ideo events.

The figures we have for 2 months in early 2006 show numbers in the normal range that reveals little interest in Maharaji's message.

The cost for each new premie must have been very high and its no wonder Rawat was so paranoid and desperate to have everything set up immaculately in a desperate wish that new initiates wouldn't just blow away with the breeze. This community was too poor to rent a special hall and buy special chairs but they did better than most local Australian communities and were always being praised by the honchos. I wasn't paying a lot of attention at the time, it was all too boring and pointless, and I have a lot more sympathy for my ex-wife now.