Prem Rawat: Man Of Peace – Biography 5 - Divine Light Mission & Spreading Knowledge in the 70's ...

On March 9, 1975, Prem Rawat and Marolyn's first child was born. They called her Premlata, meaning "Vine of Love." A month later, as soon as his young family was able to travel, they flew to India. Sat Pal had informed authorities that Prem Rawat was planning to "instigate riots." However, he was able to meet many of his students briefly under supervision of the military and police. At the Jhumri Talaiya Ashram in Bihar, he and Marolyn had an Indian-style wedding ceremony and feast, attended by a huge crowd of well-wishers.

By 1974, the headquarters of the U.S. DLM occupied four stories of a Denver office building. Prem Rawat was not yet old enough to legally manage the organization, and it had begun to develop a life and a direction of its own. The person in charge, Bob Mishler, began to feel that Prem Rawat should take on a figurehead humanitarian leadership role. He thought that the instructors should take over the responsibility for spreading Knowledge.

Some senior managers, Mishler included, had become so caught up in running the organization that they had reportedly stopped practicing Knowledge. By neglecting their practice of Knowledge in favor of running an organization, they had in effect abandoned the primary purpose for which the organization existed. An ex-official later reported in his autobiography that an angry Mishler had slammed his head into a wall during a disagreement over the storage of photos.

Another wrote, “I was working at the grandly named International Headquarters of Prem Rawat’s work in Denver. It was a time of change, but to me the most significant development was the desire of Bob Mishler, the man in charge at the time, with a charismatic but driven personality, to downplay Maharaji’s role as the teacher to a point of near invisibility. Bob felt this would be more acceptable to the American mentality. Maharaji rejected the plan, holding the role of the teacher as essential — that you couldn’t take the teacher out of the equation. Bob found the rejection hard to take, and he became increasingly unhappy, in the end resigning his role.”

His successor was Michael Dettmers, who said that Prem Rawat asked for a message to be sent to Bob saying, “The door that you walked out through goes both ways; you are always welcome to walk back through it.” It was sad, because Prem and Bob had enjoyed a good relationship. After his departure in late 1976, Mishler became increasingly bitter, making bizarre, unsubstantiated claims. Four years later Mishler and his wife died tragically in an air crash in the French West Indies.

By 1975, Knowledge had spread to 58 countries, but reports suggested that some of the instructors trained by Prem Rawat's mother, Mata Ji, had been teaching variants of the techniques of Knowledge. The problem may have been in part due to their poor command of English. Prem Rawat began training western instructors, and in July 1975, the first four non-Indian instructors were appointed and began traveling internationally. During the same month he held a 3 day event in Venezuela, a relatively safe haven from the political turmoil that gripped much of South America at that time. His speaking engagements that year included events in Nepal, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Denver, Boulder, Essen, London and Sydney. In Orlando, Florida,there was an outdoor event for 8,000 people.

In February 1976, his address to members of congress in Washington, D.C. was included permanently in the Congressional Record. His event schedule included a European tour with a national coordinators meeting in Essen, Germany, and another event in Sydney, Australia.

The following year he did an extensive tour of North America, including multi-day events and an outdoor event in Miami. He also conducted seven training sessions for new instructors. In London, he did an event for 10,500 people. In Europe, his schedule included an event in Spain and a 5 day international event at Rome's Palazzo dello Sport for 14,500 people.  

Events continued in 1978. The climax was a multi-day “Hans Jayanti” event in November at an outdoor location in Kissimmee, Florida. More than 20,000 people attended from all over the world.

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