Maharaji / Prem Rawat's Knowledge Sessions
Prem Rawat's Personal Preference For Technology Over Humanity. Is This Why He Has Failed To Attract Followers?
Really, I guess its just one of the many reasons but this is at the heart of his failure to attract followers despite the incredible financial resources and talent those people who were initiated in the early 1970's have given him. From the early 1990's there was multimedia, huge HD screens, high quality sound systems and even custom built chairs and still the numbers of premies in the West slowly fell and by 2010 the long-timers were starting to die of old age and this was something guaranteed to increase as Rawat kept reminding his dwindling group of Western premies. No matter how long you've taken to convince people beforehand, learning these techniques from watching a movie of a short fat Indian guy dressed in a bespoke suit will not have the same emotional impact as learning them in a dimly lit room from a shaven-headed Indian sadhu "saint" sitting cross-legged in front of you, dressed in saffron robes and bringing the mystic East directly into your young life in the early 1970's when this possibility was still pretty far out. Of course, even then, the drop-outs far outnumbered the people who stayed for the long haul.
Prem could no longer tell people to pranam and make the three vows of the DLM years so he came up with an updated version fit for the 90s.
Before I give you Knowledge, I will ask you for three promises. The first one is to give Knowledge a fair chance. No expectations. Mucho determination. The second promise is to keep in touch. Through listening to me speak, through the practice of Knowledge. Remove your doubts. Let me remind you again and again what is important. The third promise is not to reveal these techniques to anyone. Obey me.
Prem came up with a brilliant idea. The problem was people weren't used to sitting for long periods (unless they were watching TV or movies or driving a car or …) so they needed special hi-tech super aerodynamic chairs for the Knowledge Session. He was sure that would make a difference to the drop-out rate. There were 4 Knowledge Venues in the United States. A local community in the USA purchased 13 of these special wing chairs at $300 each, every chair required 2 special pillows. They only kept 3 of the 13 in the back of the relatively small "Conference Center" because they took-up too much space for local/weekly "video events." They rented a self-storage unit and transported them back and forth for "Mahatma Mac" autoKnowledge Sessions when needed. Luckily these Knowledge Sessions were quite rare as the premies were not getting any younger.
In the late 1990's premies became far more organised and standards, protocols, rules and regulations proliferated and service became integrated via an internet system called ©FirstClass, an Élan Vital private communication system. Prem Rawat's personal presence at sessions was hopelessly inefficient and the possibility of recruiting thousands of new followers anywhere in the world under this sytem was non-existent. Rawat was and is an ardent technophile and so a machine driven system was developed. Knowledge Sessions became highly formalised and a Knowledge Session Event Guide was produced. This system requires numerous teams of people: Event Management, Aspirant Team (aspirant contact), Hall Liaison (venue research & facilities coordination), Production Team (audio, video & lighting), Event Set-up Team (KS venue & reception area setup), Assistance Team (security, ushering & special needs), Catering Team, Translation, Finance (resource contact).
The members of this team, who often outnumbered the "people receiving the techniques of Knowledge," were not there for personal contact which was frowned upon. Even under this inefficient, impersonal system the actual teaching of the techniques only takes about 5 minutes each technique less time than the "de-briefing" of the premies involved after the session is over. The possibility of "receiving the possibility of peace" in the simple surroundings of someone's home in a person to person transmission is impossible. Rawat's world is a world with diminishing numbers and proliferating bureaucracy.
In 2005, Prem Rawat introduced "2005 - The Keys", a program of five topics explained in 70 hours of speeches by Rawat on 25 DVDs which attempt to prepare
the student for receiving Knowledge in an unquestioning manner. In the main these are just sections of the numerous speeches he has made in front of his devotees. Those in which
he can't wing it are noticeable for his poor communication skills and speech. The techniques are taught in Key Six. A request from a practitioner who feels they are ready to view
Key Six will result in an invitation to a Knowledge Session.
This was apparently too much to expect of people and so in 2014 the amount of brain-washing required by Prem Rawat before he would "reveal" the techniques of meditation has been dropped down to less than 7 hours presumably because so few people were prepared to watch the required minimum of 60 hours.
On this page is a selection of the accounts I have of people talking about "Receiving Knowledge" ie being initiated and being taught/shown the meditation techniques that Prem Rawat teaches. These initiations were first done in the West by Indian "mahatmas" and then by Western devotees and finally by the use of videos of Rawat. There is not a large number of published texts from which to choose. These are all describing events from the 1970's and it's interesting that the two who write about the most exotic and intense experiences in the Knowledge Session are also the most "out there" and neither became followers of Rawat's.