Printing the book

Los Angeles

DLM's Shri Hans Productions could not use me. Their needs were much more specific for handling film sound synchronization. So, I had to find a job. Because of my background in radio and music, I eventually took a job with a sheet music company in L.A. But that was short-lived because I quit to fly to London in 1973 for Guru Puja. I drove cross-country with two others in a two-door Ford Pinto to get to New York City and the charter Icelandic Airlines 707s that carried us to London.

Coming back from London, I found another job, and our house continued to become more and more involved with GM and DLM. I did grounds keeping and some electrical work at GM's house on Sunset Blvd. We helped renovate a new ashram that DLM bought in mid-town L.A. (seems like it was on Wilshire Blvd. or just off it).

I remember working at the Sunset Blvd. house one day when GM drove in with a bright red Austin Mini Cooper S...a neat little sports car. GM was riding behind the car along Sunset Blvd. in his Rolls Royce, pulled the guy over and offered him cash for the car. The guy sold him the car on the spot.

We all had various jobs we did at GM's house on Sunset. One of the people in our house became involved with Raja Ji's security force, helping to guard GM and the family when they were in town. I did my turn of duty there, standing alert at the end of the drive way...which had a wrought iron fence installed for security reasons.

One of my house mates, Leslie, worked for a business in Santa Monica. She introduced the owner of the company to DLM, and the owner eventually took knowledge. John was much older than any of us baby boomers. Being a successful businessman, John was courted by DLM and introduced to GM. He eventually became very close to GM and the rest of the family.

John is very psychic. He had had dreams just prior to the event at the Houston Astro Dome that a man would try to assassinate GM and the rest of the family. Houston was in the middle of the Bible belt, and we knew that there would be demonstrations by Christians against GM...calling him the anti-Christ and the like.

John could see the man very clearly in his visions. One day he and one of the people from our house went to the Astro Dome. Lonnie could not get through the security, but John simply walked by security like they could not see him...leaving Lonnie outside. John went to an section of seats in the auditorium behind the stage area, the seats that he saw in his dream that the man would shoot a gun from.

John told us all later that a man that fit the description of the person in his dreams appeared. He took one look at John, John looked at him and the man fled with John in pursuit. John cornered the man in a nearby bathroom where they struggled. John was knocked to the floor but not before he had knocked a gun the would-be assassin had out of the man's hands.

John later showed us the revolver. A strange, old revolver that had only five shots and not the normal six.

Following this incident, John later became more and more involved with GM and the rest of the family. The man was never caught, and word of the assassination attempt was kept away from any other premies knowing about it.

Houston's A Bust....It was Downhill After That

Houston was a bust...but we continued to serve. We peddled copies of the DLM magazine And It Is Divine door-to-door in West Los Angeles.

Marolyn Johnson -- some know her as Durga Ji -- lived in our premie house for a while when she was a stewardess (that's what they called them then) with Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). She owned a VW minibus that she parked in the driveway and slept in. She would come in and eat with us and used the bathroom. Though she lived out of her VW. She really was very much a sexy, earth mother. She wore very long flowing dresses....picture her twirling at a Greatful Dead show and you get the picture.

We called Marolyn "Mini Corn" because of a nick name given to her by her niece. We believed she seduced the GM and then black mailed him into marrying him. Another reason for him marrying her was so that he could become a U.S. citizen and be declared legally beyond the influences of his mother.

This was in-keeping with other DLM-arranged marriages. A number of Americans, both men and women, married foreign-born premies so that the foreign premies could become legal U.S. citizens. Some of these marriages were in name only, the husband and wife never having consummated their marriage.

When GM and Marolyn married, all hell broke loose.

During this time, I had moved into my own apartment in Venice and became friends with members of Blue Aquarius....Bhole Ji's jazz big band. Some of the members were living in apartments in Venice, but Bhole Ji and other band members were renting a recording studio in Malibu called Shangri La. The place had separate motel-like cabins, but there were not enough to house all the band members.

When the split occurred, Bhole Ji and Bal Bhagwan Ji sided with Mata Ji against GM and Raja Ji. Mata Ji declared that GM had been seduced by maya and had lost his divine spark.

So crazy was it that Raja Ji's security team swooped down on Bhole Ji and the band in Malibu with guns and tire irons. Luckily no one, to my recollection, was hurt. But the band members split very quickly....this was during the time that the Paul McCartney album and song "Band on the Run" was popular...it was number one on the charts in May 1974...so it was totally appropriate. The band left in a couple of cars and vans and split for Oregon and the Crater Lake area.

Just prior to the split, people who I had lived with in the premie house and I had become aware of a lot of goings on behind the scenes that were not appropriate. It was common knowledge, for example, that GM's first U.S. visit was financed by a hashish deal that premies had made. Reportedly, an entire table of carved hashish -- that was shellacked to look like wood -- was smuggled in, then broken apart and sold to finance the place trip for GM and some of his Mahatmas. Most of us being ex-hippies shrugged our shoulders as the idea of good smoke financing GM's visit.

But there were other things that were even more disturbing that eventually caused us to leave the DLM.

John had secretly taped recorded some conversations that he heard over the phone at GM's Sunset Blvd. house. There was a five-button phone...and when GM went into another room to take calls, John secretly tape recorded some of GM's private conversations from the front sitting room.

One of these calls included GM talking about a mahatma that had raped a woman at an ashram in the East Coast of the U.S. Another call was GM talking about smuggling money in a suitcase into the U.S. over the Canadian border to support his now growing extravagant lifestyle. Him saying that he needed the money....

John brought those tapes back to us and played them for us, and we just flipped out. We could not believe the extent of the corruption that had infiltrated the Divine Light Mission. The marriage to Marolyn Johnson was the straw the broke the camel's back.

We wrote a letter from us concerned premies and mailed to ashrams world wide, basically outlining the facts that things were not as they appeared. This was not "lila" as some would called it, but it was downright criminal activity that was occurring. We now know that this letter never made it to the premies in the ashrams.

We were literally excommunicated, but we had all decided to leave DLM, to support Mata Ji, Bal Bhagwan Ji and Bhole Ji . . . but most definitely to leave DLM.

John continued to work with Mata Ji and the rest of the family....helping to get them safely out of the country. We met with Bal Bhagwan Ji and Bhole Ji a couple of times...wtih members of the band.

But my friends and I eventually parted DLM and even the rest of the hold family. We lived with each other on and off in shared homes and apartments for many years....but we eventually all have gone our separate ways.

I became totally disillusioned in organized religion that I've become probably more an atheist or at least an agnostic. I guess my spiritual beliefs system is closest now to the later Joseph Campbell...and am "Following My (OWN) Bliss."

t wasn't until I was doing some Web surfing and put a search of Guru Maharaj Ji into an Internet search engine that I came across the ex-premie.org Web site. I hope that my story, especially the things in the last few months during the break up and split, will be enlightening to current premies and ex-premies alike.

I think GM believed himself to be Lord of the Universe. We premies fed that diillusioned belief. This is a man (only a man) with a huge ego that needed stroking. Who had a lust for fast cars and many things of THIS world. This was the basis by which we gave up literally everything to follow him. It was illusion....we saw only one side. What most premies didn't see was the lying, the subtrifuge, the criminal on-goings behind the scenes. This was worse than the unravelling of Jim and Tammy Fay Baker to me. At least Baker was only a preacher. GM thought himself the Sat Guru, an incarnation of Krishna, the Perfect Master. But in the end, he was just like any one of us....and certainly he is no God, big "G" or little 'g."

This has all been interesting, remembering. Cathartic is the word for it. It has been a "long strange trip" for me. But I've moved on.....

Boris

He asked all of us aspirants if we were willing to devote ourselves to our guru. Of course. We were there to be initiated. He then asked us how much we had in our bank account and to bring a check for the same amount if we wanted to receive k the next day. I did as everyone else in that k session. Maybe the Mahatma had streched the rules a little just this once. I thought I was told receiving knowledge was to be free.

It was in 1974. Guru Maharaj-ji had married and a family feud had followed. Suzan Butcher who, until then had been Canada’s DLM director was said to be in India with Mata-ji and the rest of the holy family. «Suzan, you are a butch» was her favorite Mata-ji quote. I was living in Montreal’s ashram. Everyone had left for New-Brunzwick (or was it Nova-Scotia) where Raja-ji was having a program on that three days week-end in September. I stayed behind, I had some service to do.

C... and S..., two « sisters » from Toronto popped-up. They had left their jobs and moved to Ottawa where they had rented a house and getting it ready to receive Mata-ji. I gave-in, sent a letter to my boss and took-off with them. It wasn’t long before we received a visit from a mahatma. He had been sent directly by the Guru to ask us to renounce our project. We agreed. Mata-ji was to fly two weeks from then. C... and S... moved to Toronto’s ashram while I did move into Ottawa’s ashram. To this day, C… does not want to discuss the incident. The landlord did not like it a bit. I hope he forgot about it since.

***

The last time I saw Guru Ji, it was in May 1996 when he came to town. It is not that I am especially fond of the chap. It rather is that Judith who still is a devotee after all these years and lives in Toronto came to Montréal for the program. She called and invited me to join her for dinner. How could I resist an invitation from the "housemother" I once was madly in love with. Once, I must insist. The darn woman had even better looks at 43 that she had at 23.

If there was such a thing to be called "spirituality", I then thought, it must aim at having me fully occupy my shoes (be in contact with oneself, appreciating one's worth, know one's own values and stand by it, listen to one's heart, know one's self, being sensitive to the invisible and all these sort of things). From this point of view the rip-off may be subtle, yet well orchestrated. We must be in contact with "this most beautiful place inside", invest where it really counts and tutti-quanti, it remains that Guru Ji is promoting his own ideology in the process. I understood on that day the contributing premies were too much alike each other not to be suspect. A useful spirituality isn't one. While at it, what is Guru Ji's ideology?

• 
  - Personality cult (me master, you disciple, pranam, agya, holy breath, holy lotus feet of the master, Charanand rit, lila, Krishna outfit ad nauseum).
  
• 
  - Saint-Kabir, new-age, oriental religious culture, arti, holy feet-water, devotion.
  
• 
  - An apparently spontaneous way of speaking that ends up so difficult to follow that one has to stop being critical.
  
• 
  - Technology at the service of spirituality as an excuse to play with expensive toys (airplanes, computers, luxury cars, and synthesisers).
  
• 
  - "Let me continue my own Guru's quest - give me your dough.
  
• 
  - I may not say this clearly, but I let you subtly understand I am of divine nature". (guru gives grace, he talks about himself at the third person, "I worship the guru", "I am the guru", "guru, the father, the devotee and the holy-name", "I want to serve the cause my father initiated" and so on).
  
• 
  - Be detached from worldly possessions. I did not believe when he added one's family is not as important as the spiritual experience since at the moment of death, family is bound to stay behind. He immediately excused himself saying, "Don't get all huffing and puffing now." I came to wish the National Enquirer would photograph him his pants down with money sticking out of his holy hole.
  

Lately, through this site, I came in contact with a lad who wanted to improve his chances to seduce a premie he has a crush for. I gathered for him the below lexicon and advised him to use it to impress her. The poor guy needed help to make sense of her queer behaviour and language. I’m posting it here hoping I’d be useful to more of us, premies included.

My favorite Bertrand Russell Quote: « I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. »

From « Introduction: On the Value of Scepticism », Sceptical Essays
[London: Allen & Unwin, 1928])
Bertand Russell (1872-1970)

My favorite Bertrand Russell sites:

The Bertrand Russell society
http://daniel.drew.edu/~jlenz/brs.html

The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University

My favorite Bertrand Russell writing about faith and religion:

Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?
A Plea for Tolerance in the Face of New Dogmas (1947)
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/2795/atheist_or_agnostic.htm

A Free Man’s Worship (1903)

Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

What Is an Agnostic? (1953)

Why I Am Not A Christian (1927)

Shelagh C

I received Knowledge in December of 1981. All sorts of predisposing conditions went into that seemingly momentous "turning point" in my life, but it's only since leaving the fold of premiedom in June, 2002, that I've really begun to gain some perspective on the whole journey - how and why I got in, what kept me there, in spite of some doubts, and what finally helped me make the decision to leave. It feels important to try to trace this journey, and what it means, because it's a sort of prototype for all the self-deluding trips I've been on in my life, in the long, slow process of waking up to who I really am!

These are ironic words, in a way, because those are precisely the same words, "who I really am", that were used so much by Maharaji and premies, and were such a powerful draw for me! When I heard him say things like, "this is about YOU!", "this is about trusting your own heart", "this is about the beauty within, inside of you", "put YOURSELF in the picture!", "be the guest of honor in your OWN life!", well, I was hooked. That's exactly what I wanted to know, wanted to hear, and started to feel for the very first time in my life!

How could I know that language itself gets subverted in a cult? That all the usual words you think you know the meaning of - words like "heart", "light", "breath", "real", "simplicity", "love", "service", and so on - all get new and special meanings, a sort of secret code if you will, that brings a special connectedness to others involved in the same game? It's a dangerous game though, because it very quietly takes you away from the ordinary commerce of the day-to-day world on which, after all, your survival and emotional healing and success and yes, even your spiritual well-being depend! In fact, it takes you AWAY from yourself!

In 1981, I was a single mother of three children, a graduate student in the English department at a major university, and very lost. I was still very much grieving the loss of a family scene even though it had been an alcoholic/codependent nightmare. I was attempting to build a career, knowing that I would now have to manage alone in the world. I was 41 years old by this time, and very scared inside. Many things had happened to me as a child that simply did not provide me with the self-esteem, life-skills and confidence everyone needs in order to manage life. I was more than a good candidate for other people's interests and agendas! Most of all, I felt very lonely and isolated.

So when I met this premie who seemed so blissed out and happy in such a simple way, and who took such a special interest in ME, well, it was too good to be true! Even though I recognized from the beginning that this fellow had some problems, I saw that he was onto something pretty powerful, and I wanted a taste of that for myself! There was something else radiating from his being. And I fell for it - not for a minute thinking that I was just another recruit for his personal pleasure as well as new fodder for the community!

It was a high and blissful time - running around in Indian skirts, becoming a shiny premie, going to satsang at local houses, and -- the ultimate bliss -- those trips to Florida or New York or California, to see the Master himself, and hang out with all these beautiful, radiant people! And it was all so simple - just practice the service, satsang and meditation, and know that beauty within, and to heck with books, study, thought, or any of that stuff! Just "be who you really are!"

I felt liberated in a way I had never felt before - and free to be a kid or an adolescent in ways I had never experienced when I was actually a kid or an adolescent! It was playtime! And I played! I had this intense relationship going on with this premie who had introduced me to the whole thing, and somehow it all seemed to give me permission to forget this whole thing about having to live in the world as a responsible adult! It was heady stuff! When we weren't making love, we'd spend the time shopping for clothes for the next event with Maharaji, swimming in the buff at the local watering hole, hanging out in cafes, doing fasts or eating vegetarian so we'd be slim and brown and beautiful, and talking, talking, talking about knowledge and the good life! It was, in fact, as addictive as any drug, and beat the heck out of spending time in some dull library slogging over a paper about deconstructionist criticism or phenomenological approaches to James Joyce!

But my relationship with this passionate premie guy was a first-class addiction, too! I justified it to myself by saying that the "connection" between us in knowledge was what it was really all about - but in actual fact, the dysfunctional patterns that had us enmeshed were really no different than anything else I had hitherto experienced by way of romantic involvements, and it was THAT side of it that I was forced to deal with eventually, knowledge or no. And it wasn't knowledge that helped me there - it was the 12-Step program! So yes, I now had a foot in two different boats, just like Maharaji warned us not to do! I tried very hard to make it work though - after all, knowledge was supposed to be about self-knowledge, and self-discovery, wasn't it? How could a healing program like the 12 Steps really contradict that? They were all roads to enlightenment, as far as I was concerned, back then. I kept going.

I remember one notable occasion when I had just come back from that first Festival of Light in Miami Beach, in July of 1981, and had run into one of my professors in a restaurant. When he asked me where I had been, I said, without a moment's hesitation, "In the Kingdom of heaven!" He never looked at me the same after that, and who could blame him? And here I was supposedly working in a doctoral program in English, writing intelligent papers, and teaching other students who wanted to pursue the academic life! Now I'm not saying that intellect alone is a good thing - nor is following the heart, without reference to reason, a good thing! There's a balance that can be achieved between the two that helps a person find the integrity and success they need! I was fast moving from an extreme reliance on the intellect to an extreme desire to just throw away everything to have this bliss that all the premies, and Maharaji himself, kept talking about! Either extreme spells doom-but oh, the ecstasies on the way down! Satsangs, initiator visits ("to clear up all the misunderstandings"), regional events, programs, festivals, trekking around in overloaded cars with screaming kids and doped out premies! It's funny how much you can choose not to see, in order to see what or whom you WANT to see! I kept going for more.