Congratulations and Contributions

Prem Rawat claims to be the unique Giver of the Gift of Knowledge whether he has described this as the revelation of a direct experience of God or as providing the possibility of peace. His methods of trying to gain new followers and keeping his current ones have evolved and now rely upon the distribution of DVDs of his infrequent speeches for which he flies around the world in a luxurious personal jet staying at the most expensive hotels and requiring a stringent set of guidelines relating to his comfort and safety to be met by the local followers.

Despite publication of statistics carefully chosen to appear to show he is always being more and more successful the reality is that he is a very minor guru or inspirational speaker who has only a remnant of the followers who have been involved with him at one time in the past 40 years and the number of his Western followers have at least halved from their peak in the 1970's when he began to take complete control of the public portrayal of his claims and career. The number of his Indian followers is difficult to ascertain but based on the crowds at his festival appearances is at most a quarter of the following he inherited from his father.

Funds donated to to the registered charities, formerly Divine Light Mission, Élan Vital and now including Words of Peace Global, Words of Peace International, Human Development Through Self-Knowledge and a host of national organisations, provide the expenses for this travelling and the travelling provides the inspiration for the donations that provide the expenses in an Ourobouros circle. Over the last 25 years the cost of attracting each new long term member must have reached quite a significant figure. Rawat claims to have a unique method to teach his students and a unique power to inspire them but his organisations use standard techniques of raising funds. The individual touch is to provide annual, exclusive "gifts" to the regular contributors of photos of him and CDs of "poetic"excerpts of his speeches sometimes set to muzak with songs performed by his more talented followers and one of his daughters.