Did Gold's solitary Sants actually become leaders

Ron Geaves cannot deny that the early 1970s bricolage of occulturage but he attempts to disassociate Prem Rawat from the mistaken views publicly proclaimed by Divine Light Mission members. He attempts to argue about the young Prem Rawat's ideas and beliefs always with the clear subtext that shows him thinking and acting in a way that Geaves thinks a solitary sant ie "a sant is someone who has realized the ultimate truth within creation, with particular reference to the presence of the divine within the human being and therefore experiences a higher reality in daily life" would think and act. Assuming such a person has ever existed. Only Prem Rawat can know his thoughts, others can only know what he was publicly saying and doing.

There are some main strands to his argument:

• Prem Rawat Did Nor Preach a Millenial Message
• Prem Rawat Did Nor Believe He Was God
• Prem Rawat Did Nor Believe the Things that were said about him by his followers or family
• Prem Rawat Began to Remove Indian concepts from His Teachings in 1974
• Prem Rawat's charisma was the source of the success of Divine Light Mission

168 Prem Rawat and Counterculture

syncretism that is at play here in the above encounters between countercultural individuals and Prem Rawat.

A closer look at developments in the early 1970s would find much of the above becoming problematic in the Western environment. We have already seen that early British and American followers persuaded Prem Rawat to attend Glastonbury to fulfil prophesies concerning the advent of the New Age and that rumours of an avatar visiting the Fayre were prevalent in the counterculture grapevine. This tendency would reach its apex two years later at the aptly named Millennium '73 Festival at the Houston Astrodome in Texas.

New Age expectations abounded in the counterculture. Michael Finch recalls, 'I did take the Golden Age seriously' (2009: 111). Tina, one of Downton's informants, describes taking LSD with friends as she had heard that the Aquarian Age had begun that night. She says, 'We wanted to see what would happen. That night I realized that my only reason I was alive was to realize God' (1979: 112). Michael Finch described the festival in Houston as 'the event that would usher in the New Age, a thousand years of peace, and the recognition by this jaded world that the Lord, Guru Maharaj Ji, was indeed here' (2009: 119). Rennie Davis would declare from the stage constructed in the Astrodome, 'If America wants to know what is happening it must first understand the main thing that is happening, the Lord is on the planet, he is in a human body and he's about to usher in the greatest change in the history of human civilization' (Downton, 1979: 121). The author does not remember being overtly millennial but when on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, dreams of an 'Albion' replacing the British social and cultural 'straight' world were foremost in my mind.

It would appear from this millennial language that any sense of Prem Rawat's 'solitary sant' origins had been lost by these counterculture students.

The counterculture youth joining DLM had no idea that the young Prem Rawat couls be defined as a 'solitary sant.' The sants were not promoters of a futuristic utopia or an afterlife of bliss in paradise, but rather they focused on the possibility of fulfilment in the present. Prem Rawat would sometimes refer to the Hindu concepts of kal yuga (Age of Darkness) and its antithesis sat yuga (Age of Truth), but these have much longer durations of time than the astrological ages used in New Age discourse. Generally, he would also focus on this life as the opportunity for realization. Downton remarks that ideas were developing among premies who considered 'Guru Maharaj Ji to be so spiritually perfect and powerful that he could do no wrong and that no obstacle was big enough to stop him from reaching his goal of ushering a new age of peace' (p. 178). To what degree Prem Rawat actually saw his goal as ushering in this 'new age' is debatable but

Western counterculture individuals who came to the guru in 1971 seemed to differ from their Indian counterparts over their motivations for renunciation. Downton reports one person as saying, 'When I received Knowledge in 1971, the general feeling was that soon the whole world would have peace, so to hold anything, like money, job, education, or family, was a sign of a weak level of devotion' (p. 189).

There is no indication given that this person was a renunciate but Geaves, himself, has given evidence as to why he became an ashramee:"

"In a second I understood all the actions of my life to that point. My heart knew that from then on everything was going to be fine because I was home. I cried the most beautiful tears of my life and prayed that I would never be cast adrift in the world alone again. I returned to England with Sandy at the end of 1969 intent on establishing an ashram as a centre to tell everyone about Maharaji and Knowledge."

Ron Geaves attempts to argue about the young Prem Rawat's ideas and beliefs always with the slant?? that shows him acting in a way that Geaves thinks a solitary sant ie "a sant is someone who has realized the ultimate truth within creation, with particular reference to the presence of the divine within the human being and therefore experiences a higher reality in daily life" would. Only Prem Rawat knows his thoughts, others can only know what he was publicly saying and doing.

Prem Rawat Did Nor Preach a Millenial Message

There is no doubt that Prem Rawat's young countercultural followers shared a muddled melange or bizarre bricolage of esoteric concepts derived ??? including some form of millenial expectations - the Age of Aquarius was nigh - and in late 1973 these grew increasingly bizarre and wide ranging. The Kohoutek comet which would reach perihelion on 28th December fostered ideas that aliens were coming to the Millenium 73 festival in Hoston, November. There are claims that his eldest brother was the source of these apocalyptic ideas and he did publicly recount at least some of them though not in his recorded satsangs or formal speeches.

These ideas seemed to have reached their apex in November 1973 and there is no doubt that the festival was seen among American counterculture followers as the fulfilment of their dreams of social change. This would result in considerable speculation and prophesies concerning what would take place in the Astrodome.

It is unlikely that Prem Rawat would have shared his brother's views or understood the cultural baggage that arrived with the label 'Millenium'. For him, it would have been one more event in a very busy tour schedule - one that was much more ambitious in scope than anything undertaken so far.

REBUTTAL

Downton felt that the festival left 'ruined dreams [that] were hidden under their exuberance' (1979: 189). These 'ruined dreams', however, were more to do with the counterculture's expectations of a New Age.

The parting of the way with counterculture

The explanation for the millennialism may lie in the myths of Christianity being closer to the surface in the American psyche than the much more secularized North Europeans. - Michael Finch states that these expectations were just as high in Europe Whatever the reason, the relative failure of the Astrodome event to match expectations of attendance, leaving the mission in considerable debt, was seen by academics as one of the principal reasons for the decline of the movement. In addition, the failure to fulfil prophesies created disillusionment in some North American followers. After Millennium '73, Prem Rawat would radically transform and overhaul the vehicles used for the transmission of the message, picking up momentum during the decades following his arrival in the West in 1971, while simultaneously striving to maintain the central message that peace is possible. He would move the emphasis away from global peace to individual fulfilment arguably consolidating his empathy with the 'good news' central to sant discourse (Geaves, 2004a: 45-62). He would begin a process of rooting out the more obviously Eastern beliefs and practices that were culturally embedded in a message that had originated in India, although it should be noted that the global vision of peace was not an Indian export but rooted in

countercultural expectations. In the 1980s, he would also begin to critique the 'New Age' beliefs of his followers. Both sets of meaning constructions would be combined together as 'concepts', a term taken to include all constructions of reality that would include religions.

Prem Rawat's attempts to transform the organizational structures and to eradicate the more overtly Indian cultural and religious aspects of his

172 Prem Rawat and Countercultare

All these developing practices and beliefs arising out of Hindu worldviews were encouraged by the senior members of Maharaji's family, especially his mother and eldest brother, and the visiting Indian mahatmas, who had taken on the leadership of the mission during Prem Rawat's childhood and had been endowed with varying degrees of divinity and holiness by followers. It is difficult to ascertain the degree to which they encouraged the occultural elements creeping in from the counterculture, and it is also difficult to ascertain Prem Rawat's feelings towards the powerful religious movement developing around him except that it is possible to surmise that he had a degree of ambiguity concerning what was unfolding in his name. Now reaching adulthood, he was beginning to assert his own vision to the consternation of some family members and the Indian mahatmas.

There is no evidence in his speeches and actions at the time that he felt any ambiguity. He revelled in it

Three key events between 1973 and 1975 hastened the demise of DLM and the beginning of the deconstruction of the Indian heritage that had accompanied Maharaji from India. The three significant events were the impact of the event in the Houston Astrodome in November 1973, the marriage of Prem Rawat to an American follower named Marolyn Iohnson in 1974 and the subsequent departure of Prem Rawat's mother and two eldest brothers for India from where they announced that Prem Rawat had been 'corrupted' by his stay in the West and that the eldest brother was taking over as the new satguru and leader of DLM. However, the reality of the apparent decline was more to do with a period of rebuilding that was required as the young adult Prem Rawat took on the actual leadership after the departure of his mother and brothers. For several years, there was a liminal period in which he experimented with organizational forms, closed down the ashrams, removed the Indian accretions and set up new channels to communicate his vision to remaining followers (Geaves, 2006b).

REBUTTAL

Actual events

So soon after the original counterculture success that began at Glastonbury, Prem Rawat would begin to dismantle the cluster of beliefs and practices that made DLM an Indian movement. In addition, he would distance himself from the counterculture and its millennial hopes and the attempt to link him with countercultural syntheses of Eastern beliefs and Western esotericism. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, new directions were to weaken counterculture identification with the guru, although the considerable following that had developed in the West during the 1970s remained alongside him as staunch supporters of his work. Their definitive worldview that included both the hope of inner transformation and outer revolution, combined with Eastern philosophy and Western esotericism, would be diffused into a watered-down New Age set of beliefs and practices, mainly confined to holistic or alternative medicine. The need to discover other resources to counteract the psychic damage done to individuals as a result of drug use and excessive hedonism was over as premies raised families and moved into middle age. New forms of counterculture would remain focused on Glastonbury and Stonehenge as sites of sacredness throughout the 1980s but would rarely discover Prem Rawat or be aware of his impact on their predecessors.

1971 to 1973 marks the peaking of the counterculture's involvement with Prem Rawat, an encounter that flourished between Glastonbury Fayre and Millennium '73. To Andrew Kerr and the small group of hippies who worked with him, Glastonbury Fayre was to be the renewal of the countercultural dream that had appeared to have gone sour through commercialization. With hindsight, it is apparent the Fayre was the beginning of the end for the mass manifestation of counterculture that marked the late 1960s. Certainly, as far as the United States was concerned, many counterculture individuals found a way of continuing the dream by transporting both their senso lato and senso stricto understandings of New Age into a NRM built around the message of a 'solitary sant'. Yet they were not to know that there was an innate contradiction in building a perfect organization around such an individual. The dream was to effectively

174 Prem Rawat and Counterculture

die at Millennium '73, more or less ending Prem Rawat's encounter with Western counterculture which would go its own way creating diverse manifestations in the decades that followed the 1970s. In these new manifestations, the earlier flirtation with Eastern mysticism would continue only as a weak undercurrent among the bricolage of beliefs and practices that would flourish in the final decades of the century and into the twenty-first.

Prem Rawat would catch a zeitgeist on his arrival in the West. A generation had created the first mass counterculture based around 'high culture' and festival culture but by the beginning of the 1970s many had taken their drug experiences to the limit. Downton argues that before the advent of spiritual movements there were few ways out of counterculture that were deemed acceptable, without appearing to 'sell out' and return to 'straight' society (1979: 118). By the beginning of the 1970s, word was spreading through the counterculture that spirituality, especially Eastern mysticism, could replace the drug experience with a 'natural' or 'permanent high'. Downton described this as 'a mass exodus out of drugs and into mysticism' (p. 118). It is difficult to ascertain to what degree Prem Rawat's message was instrumental in transforming the lives of thousands of countercultural youth or to what degree they had already tired of the negative consequences of the lifestyles they had chosen and were ready to participate in a transformation that provided an escape that was even more meaningful than counterculture life. The reality is probably a combination of both. Either way, Prem Rawat has to be credited with playing a significant role in the eclipse of the counterculture.

I began this book with the question to what degree can Prem Rawat be described as a 'New Age' guru? The degree to which counterculture individuals took with them a 'fairly rigid set of ideas about his divinity and the coming of the new age' (p. 199) and appropriated a 'solitary sant' worldview to their own in the early 1970s would suggest the answer would appear to be affirmative. Yet Downton also notes that Prem Rawat's teachings were marked by an emphasis on giving up or challenging pre-existing religious beliefs and concepts (p. 199). The history of the sant phenomena in North India shows this to be one of the trademarks of the solitary sant's role in Indian spiritual life. Downton also noted that during 1971 social forces encouraged millenarian beliefs within the counterculture. He is right to point out that after 1973 there were two sets of concepts that required challenging: those that arose from earlier countercultural socialization and those they had picked up from within the movement.

Prem Rawat's struggle as the first 'solitary sant' to move out of India would see him challenge the concepts and beliefs introduced from the East in the

Counterculture, Occulture and Easternization 175

early 1970s, spurred on by the differences that he had with his family and most of the mahatmas whose religious and cultural worldviews were reinformed by their Hindu upbringing. The two elements identified by Downton, that is countercultural norms and those picked up in DLM, would come under the guru's scrutiny, and in time, so would the Eastern construction of 'guru' come under the 'solitary sant' radar for deconstruction. It is interesting to observe that in Prem Rawat's public discourses of recent decades he has been as critical of the new popular usage of 'spiritual' as he is of conventional religion. His critique of 'spiritual' as a contemporary category of identity marks him out as critical of New Age, perceiving the bricolage of practices and beliefs as just another mindset. Downton makes an important observation that it was only after 1973, when millenarian beliefs declined, that Prem Rawat's counterculture students were 'ready for an assault on their ideology' (p. 200). If Downton is correct, he is confirming that the popular perception of Indian gurus as maintaining an autocratic control over their devotees required an overhaul. It would seem that when the gurus came to the West in the late 1960s, their teachings were just as much appropriated and made to fit into existing countercultural ideas on reality and thus undermined ideas of 'autocratic control'.

In the final analysis, I return to the theoretical considerations that inspired me in part to write the book. I hope that I have demonstrated that Easternization is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. I remain unhappy with analyses that perceive it as part of the bricolage that makes up New Age in the senso lato form, creating what Christopher Partridge names 'occulture'. In a diffused form, not very recognizable to its Hindu or Buddhist origins in the East, it can be appropriated by those drawn towards the esoteric or the occult and reordered in the image of these Western beliefs. The 1960s counterculture further diffused it, far more than those who embraced it through theosophy or other movements in the early twentieth century. Some elements of Easternization would embody cherished and time-held traditions of India or elsewhere, and these would insist upon transforming countercultural beliefs. This was no more apparent than in the teachings of Prem Rawat, who I have categorized as a 'solitary sant', even though he may not agree with the label. He does not see himself as 'Hindu' or 'Buddhist' and refuses most definitions of where he fits in the religious/ spiritual spectrum, usually denying that he belongs to either. As the 'solitary sants' defined by Gold (1987) would be equally unhappy with pigeon-holing, it is the closest fit I can find. It would appear to me that that attempt to understand Easternization in the period under investigation would require the type of approach used by naturalists to identify tigers living in their natural habitats. Bruce Kukele uses

176 Prem Rawat and Counterculture

the technique of photographing a section of the tiger's stripes and reimposes the image over that of another tiger caught by the camera in the same area. Although tiger stripes are similar, just as human fingerprints they are never identical ('Tiger stripes, 9 May 2013'). The reimposed images reveal whether the tiger is the same animal or different. I would advocate that any attempt to understand the similarities of Eastern transplants with each other or their synergy with counterculture spiritualities requires such an approach. I have tried to do this with the case study of Prem Rawat and his encounter with Glastonbury Fayre. It reveals a very complex intermingling of worldviews with various players adding to the construction and deconstruction of beliefs, ultimately leading to the destruction of DLM in the early 1970s. An Indian teacher in the West is influenced by the new environment but does not necessarily commit himself or herself to the worldview of new followers.

Prem Rawat does not associate the practice or experience of Knowledge as religion. Drawing upon Jonathan Z. Smith's (2003) model of religion as there (civic or state-sponsored), religion here (domestic or customary) and religion anywhere (pragmatic or apotropaic), it would be reasonable to agree with the decision to place Knowledge outside of religion, for it is certainly none of these, and Prem Rawat's message is either critical of the above categories or treats them as irrelevant. However, he is no longer happy with spiritual either. His encounter with the counterculture has made more dismissive of the term. Ulrike Popp-Baier prefers the term 'self-controlled religiosity' to the contemporary usage of spiritual. She defines this as where 'people select and combine elements from different belief systems, practices and organizations to meet their own specific needs and practices' (2010: 34). Premies may do this to a large degree, and in the years following Glastonbury, purists went along with their guru and disowned most of such practices. Others held that Knowledge was superior but practised a number of elements from different belief systems to meet specific needs and practices. There is no sign that Prem Rawat ever did so himself. He remained committed to the path of the 'solitary sant' who dismisses all such efforts as a non-negotiable failure to achieve the goal of fulfilment.

Each case study is different. Prem Rawat's 'stripes' are unique and do not match any other Indian guru nor provide a perfect fit to the beliefs of contemporary spiritualities, even though there may be some matches. These apparent 'fits' can confuse but should not lead us as scholars to oversimplified conclusions.

10 Postscript

Both Prem Rawat and the organizers of Glastonbury Festival have striven for almost half a century (1971-2019) to find a format that responds to the time, circumstances and their respective objectives. Prem Rawat remains unchanged in his mission to promote peace encapsulated in his often repeated maxim 'the peace that you are looking for is inside of you'. Glastonbury Festival cannot any longer be described as an exercise in spiritual geometry that would revolutionize Britain as envisaged by the counterculture of the late 1960s. Both have struggled with various organizational identities. In 1990, Glastonbury changed its name to Glastonbury Festival for Contemporary Performing Arts to reflect the range of attractions now on offer (Bailey, 2013: 61). The label of 'Fayre' had been officially given up in 1981 when the new name of Glastonbury Festival was coined by Michael Eavis (p. 24).

Glastonbury Festival Throughout the 1980s, the festival struggled with how to balance its image as the foremost counterculture event on the summer schedule while distancing itself from, in Eavis's own words in 1978, 'too many hippies and too many drugs'. However, the real problem was the losses incurred by a free festival primarily aimed at the counterculture, now morphed into New Age Travellers moving on to Glastonbury after celebrating the solstice at Stonehenge (p. 17). The solution was to hand the organization of the festival over to CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), a cause dear to Michael Eavis and an organization with counterculture credibility. Throughout the 1980s, the festival grew in size, with numbers attending increasing from twenty-five thousand in 1982 and to sixty- five thousand by the end of the decade. Donations to CND and local charities

178 Prem Rawat and Counterculture

would average around £100,000 per annum in the final years of the decade. The festival would begin to attract the top bands of the era to play from the Pyramid Stage. Van Morrison (2), Iackson Browne, Echo and the Bunnymen, Aswad, Style Council, The Boomtown Rats, The Cure, Madness, Simply Red, The Waterboys, The Pogues, Level 42, Elvis Costello, Suzanne Vega and Pixies would appear throughout the decade. Land was purchased adjacent to the farm in order to accommodate the rising numbers and improve facilities ('The History of Glastonbury Festival').

The early 1990s saw continuing trouble with travellers, security issues and complaints from the local councils. Perimeter fences would be added with increasing effectiveness to keep out those who felt that the ideal of the free festival should be maintained. In 1992, Michael Eavis would begin to donate to Greenpeace and Oxfam. He felt that the era of the Cold War had ended and that environmental issues were more urgent than nuclear disarmament ('The History of Glastonbury Festival'). Numbers had risen to seventy thousand and the donations given to the charities reached £250,000. By the end of the decade, over half a million pounds were being donated to the charities and attendance had exceeded one hundred thousand for the first time. The festival was being broadcast on BBC2 and Channel 4 and transmission was global (https://Www. glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/history/ 1995). In 1997, the site was expanded to 800 acres (https://WWW.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/history/1997). The music acts over the decade still reflected the counterculture origins of the festival with Velvet Underground, Lenny Kravitz, P. I. Harvey, Massive Attack, Bob Dylan, The Levellers and the Chemical Brothers featuring, but the festival was now the foremost music venue in the World and could also attract the most famous stars of the era, for example, Oasis, Blur, Simple Minds, Portishead, Radiohead, Sting and Robbie Williams (https://WWW.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/history).

The first and second decade of the twenty-first century would see the festival consolidate its position as the foremost music festival in the world. TV coverage would take place on every day of the festival. Numbers attending would rise to around 150,000. By 2003, the amount given to Greenpeace, CND, Oxfam, Fairtrade, Wateraid and local charities had risen to one million pounds (https:// Www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/history/history-2003/). The festival would encourage green causes sponsoring the I Count campaign, which highlighted the need to address climate change, and signed up seventy thousand people to the campaign over the Weekend (https://WWW.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/ history/history-2007/). In 2015, for the first time since 1971, the festival was visited by a major spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama arrived at the Green Fields for

Postscript 179

a morning address to a huge crowd in the King's Meadow, took lunch with the monks in the Greenpeace Field and then made an impromptu appearance on the Pyramid Stage in the afternoon in the middle of Patti Smith's set (https://www. glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/history/2015-2/). The festival's liberal credentials would be further enhanced in 2017 when Ieremy Corbyn would address the audience from the main stage (https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/ history/2017-2/).

By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the festival's tickets would sell out within twenty-four hours of their release. There would be over thirty areas, one hundred stages, over two thousand artists and performers and the BBC film coverage would go out to over thirty countries (https://Www.glastonburyfestivals. co.uk/history/2015-2/). The stars would get bigger but more eclectic. The Rolling Stones would play in 2013 along with other major counterculture figures from the same era. Ioan Baez and Leonard Cohen performed in 2008 but the introduction of rap stars, Lionel Ritchie, Shirley Bassey and Neil Diamond, would offend the traditionalists who felt that Glastonbury should remain true to its origins in rock festival culture. The festival would incline towards pop as well as rock, seeking out major stars of several genres, many of them far from counterculture. However, huge amounts of money were generated for green charities, and the visits by the Dalai Lama and Ieremy Corbyn would ensure that the world's most successful music festival would retain at least liberal credibility.

Prem Rawat

Prem Rawat would face the challenge of presenting an ancient wisdom in a contemporary Western setting, facing up to the challenges that were brought to him by the cult controversies among some NRMs in the 1970s, throwing off the Indian guru label that no longer worked in a global context and, as with Glastonbury, moving to a larger playing field than that presented by the counterculture. He had always expressed that he wanted to bring his message of peace within to all human beings, regardless of nationality, gender or religion. We have seen that the worldview of the counterculture presented a barrier as much as Indian spirituality or the Hindu religion. Like the Fayre, he would also change his appellation, moving away from Guru Maharaj Ji to the plainer and less baggage-laden 'Maharaji' to finally settling upon his given name, Prem Rawat. Divine Light Mission (1971-82) was abandoned to be replaced for several years by Élan Vital from 1982 to 2002 (Geaves, 2004a, 2006a, 2006b.

180 Prem Rawat and Counterculture

I have argued that in spite of forces such as globalization, Prem Rawat's message as a narrative of transformation appeals because it provides some people with a more appropriate way of existing in the world. Each organization created over the years has been an evolving attempt to produce a closer match between Prem Rawat's vision and this appropriateness in order to produce a more effective resource (Geaves, 2006a, 2006b).

Prem Rawat has never ceased to travel around the world speaking to audiences that range in size from 100 (Hapuna, Hawaii) to 325,000 (Gaya, India). An accomplished pilot, he flies himself, encircling the world at least once a year. His website states that he 'regularly clocks up 100,000 miles and attends two events a week, in an average year' ('About Prem Rawat'). Since his advent to the West in 1971, he prides himself that his events are not advertised and have no ticket price, paid for by voluntary donation. In recent years, he has been asked to speak as a guest at a variety of formal gatherings where dignitaries interested in peace or conflict resolution might gather. Examples include Australia's Parliament House in 2005 and the Italian and Argentine Senates in 2006. In the same year, he was awarded the title 'Ambassador of Peace' by the rector of the International University of Peace (Unipaz) in Brazil (ibid.). Today, his addresses are broadcast on television channels around the world and are available through a wide range of media, both online and offline. As a result, his message is now available in ninety-seven countries and seventy languages.

These invitations stem from his humanitarian work. In 2001, Prem Rawat founded The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF), which focuses on the fundamental human needs of food, water and peace so that people can live with dignity, peace and prosperity. The foundation's model food program, Food for People, provides hot nutritious meals for children in poverty-stricken areas, now including Bantoli, India; Tsarpu, Nepal; and Otinibi, Ghana. The TPRF Peace Education Program is an innovative educational program with a curriculum that fosters personal strength and positive life skills. The foundation also provides relief for survivors of natural disasters ('Humanitarian Efforts'). TPRF has relationships with the other humanitarian organizations with a strong presence in the field: Friends of the World Food Program, the Red Cross, the Houston Food Bank, Action Against Hunger and Oxfam, among others. These partnerships have proved to be successful and to date the foundation's relationship with Friends of the World Food Program has enabled them to provide food for one month to 9,000 Indonesian tsunami victims, 2,000 famine victims in Niger, 4,500 school children in Guatemala, 6,000 earthquake victims in Pakistan and thousands of earthquake victims in Peru. Through the Red Cross, the foundation

Postscript 181

provided food aid to mudslide victims in the Philippines, and through Oxfam, TPRF helped to provide drinking water to war victims in Lebanon and Israel. In partnership with the Houston Food Bank, TPRF provided three meals a day for three months to eight thousand victims of Hurricane Katrina (ibid.).

Perhaps the most successful initiative has been the PEP (Peace Education Programme), consisting of ten sessions, each focusing on a particular theme. These customized, interactive workshops are non-religious and non- sectarian. The content of each theme is based on excerpts from Prem Rawat's international talks. The themes are Peace, Appreciation, Inner Strength, Self- Awareness, Clarity, Understanding, Dignity, Choice, Hope and Contentment. The programme has been particularly successful in prisons and is on offer in nearly five hundred correctional facilities globally (www.tprf.org/programs/ peace-education-program).

Prem Rawat's success globally matches that of Glastonbury Festival, although arguably far less known. The charitable causes reflect the humanitarian activities carried out by the festival, albeit Prem Rawat remains primarily committed to the message that he arrived with in 1971. His words that introduce his website show his commitment to the teachings that first drew his attention to the counterculture: 'What I offer people is not just talk, but a way to go inside and savor the peace that is within.' Experience, embodiment and immediacy still prevail and remain central. In this respect, there are parallels with the festival, although both have moved far from their counterculture origins. Prem Rawat's challenge remains the same as in 1971; how to convince a sceptical or disinterested public that his message is relevant to their lives? Glastonbury struggles with balancing its counterculture origins with its present-day standing as the largest commercial rock festival on earth.