Between Dark and Dark by David Lovejoy

David Lovejoy, one time President of Divine Light Mission, Australia and Great Britain is the managing editor of the Byron Bay Echo, a local newspaper published in the resort town of Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia.

He has been closely associated with John MacGregor and wrote this letter purporting to refute MacGregor's and Michael MacDonald's (current editor, Byron Bay Echo) criticism of Prem Rawat and his "Knowledge" in 2001 though it actually refuted a "straw argument" of Lovejoy's.

He has written this "memoire" about his life which most people would find extremely boring but is of interest to his friends, family and anyone wishing to read about the "hippies" who became followers of Prem Rawat in India circa 1971 and the Divine Light Mission in Australia in the 1970's. There is a review by Michael McDonald printed in the Byron Bay Echo on August 16, 2005.

Excerpts:

Page 23 Lovejoy's discusses his shock at hearing about Rawat's wedding from a reporter and his respect for Mike Donner, whom he quotes without acknowledging that Donner became a highly critical apostate who confiormed revelations of Rawat's alcohol and marijuana abuse and generally abusive relationships.

Pages 4 Lovejoy's first contact with Prem Rawat through Brian Kitt, aka Mahatma Saphlanand, the driving force behind the early Divine Light Mission

Pages 67 - 78 Lovejoy's memories of his stay in India at Rawat's ashram.

Pages 162 A bow to the early, exciting days of Divine Light Mission. However Lovejoy writes: "Maharaji is an incomparable public speaker and a wise strategist, and if he chose to hone everything down to the delivery of the techniques of meditation in a respectable, non-religious and noncontroversial way, then he did so in order to maximise people's opportunities for receiving Knowledge." But since Rawat has "honed everything down" the numbers of his students has halved despite 25 years of attempts at gaining new adherents and many of those who consider themselves followers live lives in which Rawat is a very peripheral figure, as has Lovejoy. Of course, Rawat is, in a sense, an incomparable public speaker, there is no-one else any where near as awful a public speaker with whom to compare him.

Pages 165 Lovejoy pseudo-philosophical, "deep and meaningful" page about Rawat's meditation techniques, something he's hardly bothered with for 30 years.