Some Background on the Tim Freke and Prem Rawat Monologues

Yes this video is a really good one. I would say I wished I'd seen it years ago, but then I know I would have probably done the premie thing and taken Prem's answers as 'gospel' and seen the interviewer as 'an infidel'. Such is the nature of cult thinking, but it's also the nature of devotion and devotion, in spite of its entanglements with personality cults, is a beautiful path, full of amazong learning opportunites. I was on that path (off and on so to speak) for 50 years and I have beautiful memories, but I am very glad to now be off it and more on my own path, filled with obstacles as it may be. As (Uncle) Carl Jung once said, if you find there are no obstacles. you are probably on someone else's path.

Now, when I stepped off the path, through as series of synchronicities that, with hindsight, were amazing, I ended up on a Zoom event with a guy called Tim Freke. Because it was my first event with him, he invited me to introduce myself and say something about how I'd come to be at the event. During that introduction I mentioned that I had come off a path of devotion to a guru. At this point Tim asked the guru's name and I told him it was Prem Rawat. That's when he told me that he was about to interview Prem Rawat in his home town of Glastonbury, where Prem was about to do one of his unfathomable 'prestige' events.

Without going too deeply into all the synchronicities that Tim experienced in setting up that interview, there are some points that I must mention. Firstly Tim been a committed premie for a number of years propagating to several people in his home village, including his mother and his father - in fact, they used to drive him to Satsang. I believe he was in his early twenties when this happened. Then at an event that included Q&A, Tim's mum asked about using her beragon as she found it helpful and got what was a pretty disgusting answer. That was it for Tim, he loved his mother dearly and to see her humilitated in public like that was too much. He left and began to do the work that he's still doing today. Part of that work was interviewing all sorts of interesting people most of whom would engage with him as human to human and have a conversation in which they could agree to disagree. This series of interviews is avaiable free on YouTube under the series title "What is Life?" - this being the question Tim uses to open the conversation.

I watched the interview with great interest and then had a long Zoom call with Tim afterwards, as he invited me to do. One of the things that he shared with me was that there were broadly two types of interviewee - those that are prepared to have a conversation and those who, let me say, just want to preach and/or talk down and/or advertise themselves. Prem Rawat definitely fell into the latter category, although there are points in the interview where Tim almost manages to get under the public persona and start a genuine conversation.

I found that interview very helpful as are my ongiong interactions with Tim, who does his very best to share what he knows (and he knows stuff that really helps me find my own path) without creating any kind of hierarchy around himself. In fact, he seems to me, to do almost everyting humanly possible to shut down any form of adulation that doesn't come from a level playing field, so to speak. So I am speaking here as a friend of Tim's and as someone who has attended his retreats in Glastonbury and regularly attends Zoom meetings with the International Community of Unividuals, an organsiation he started to share what he has learned with as many people as possible. Of course I am still very wary of any hint that I am getting into another personality cult and I have had, and am welcome to have, direct conversations with Tim on that subject. He has never tried to 'come the guru' with me. These days, I think we both know what that relationship smells like and all too well.

So, I have put all this on the table in order that you can see where I'm coming from, before I share a link to Tim's conversation with Prem Rawat. When I watched it I found Prem evasive, preachy and, surpisingly, very materialistic - as far as I could tell he had, and for all I know still has, a reductionist materialist idealogy. That would certainly explain all the cars, planes, houses, helicopters and so on.

One more point to note is that Tim has written about 22 books including the international best seller "The Jesus Mysteries" and his PR man who set up the interview, knew this. So it's my view that the PR man was looking for a way to associate Prem Rawat's authoring skills with Tims - the mismatch of the epoch?

Finally, and well done if you got this far, the comments from premies on YouTube are beyond laughable and they made me wince. I've been there in the personality cult myself, making ridiculous comments like a sheep, but without any sign of a Good Shepherd or a even a half-decent author.