Did Gold's solitary Sants actually become leaders

attend his event in November 197], joining those who had travelled on the chartered Boeing 747 (1996: 20). The Rainbow Gypsies who describe themselves as 'a theater troupe, a traveling commune, a band of pilgrims dancers, poets, musicians, hipsters, hustlers, mystics and freaks' had left California in 1969, danced and performed their way across Europe, Africa and Asia fuelled by 'a vast quantity of pure Owsley LSD' ('About the Rainbow Gypsies'). They had entertained the crowd at Glastonbury and next morning departed to meet Prem Rawat in London. They would receive Knowledge and continue across land to India performing on their way. Their final destination was Prem Rawat's ashram in Haridwar?

By 1972. Prem Rawat and the Fayre were inextricably woven together in counterculture myth-making. When Nicolas Roeg would release his film Glastonbury Fayre on general release to cinemas in the UK, the distribution poster would have the name 'Guru Maharaj Ii' headlining over the rock bands that played in the festival. At the end of his memoirs written in 2012, Kerr summarizes his spiritual position. He remains apocalyptic and calls for the vision of 1971 to be restored to save the planet from greed. He affirms,

I have come to the conclusion that what I have learned from the Knowledge and the teachings of Iesus, Gnosticism, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, and the Buddha, who sat beneath the Bodhi Tree for 49 days in meditation until he saw the Light, that same Eternal Light. The practice of Knowledge (the Gnosis) reveals that it is simple but not at all easy. (2011: 349)

Kerr's perennial wisdom expressed in 2011 is echoed by Charles Cameron in 1972. The book Who Is Gum Maharaj Ii? is infused throughout with a sense of an eternal transmission of Knowledge or Gnosis revealed by an unbroken chain of masters; on the way, it refers to prophesies of a final moment when the greatest master of all will appear to bring enlightenment to all living human beings. It also affirrns the techniques of Knowledge through an investigation of quantum physics, health benefits and its ability to free the human mind from addiction. The book is openly messianic and apocalyptic and certainly chimes with sense stricto definitions of New Age but it is not in any sense advocating the bricolage that makes up later senso iato forms of contemporary spirituality. It is inclusive in that it includes all cultures and religions as having had a master but exclusive in the sense that it calls everyone to follow the master of the time rather than the religions that developed from masters of the past. Rennie Davis was openly millennial, declaring at Berkeley University that 'the Perfect Master teaches perfection, and will bring perfection on Earth - not after the

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Millennium, but right now, in three years' (Kent, 2001: 48, 49). Prem Rawat would appear to accept that peace was possible in a very short time. He would declare at the Millennium '73 event in Houston, 'I will establish peace in this world.' ISKCON devotees would also be convinced that Krishna Consciousness would occur globally within decades. It is hard to determine to what degree either Prabhupada or Prem Rawat bought into these utopian visions for the near future. It is more likely that their respective encounters with countercultural hopes would fuel their own sense of mission and their respective reasons for leaving India.

Twenty-five years later, Prem Rawat was more cautious. He refers to the well- being and meditation industry as something completely different to the aims of his message. He points towards motivation and asserts, 'Sometimes people receive Knowledge for other reasons - to make their blood pressure go down, or make their head hurt less. Or something else. But Knowledge doesn't work for that' (1996: 12). In the same interview, he also states, 'I wasn't trying to offer people a better lifestyle or a substitute for religion' (ibid.). On the topic of messianic expectations among his followers, he declares, 'Some people had a concept that I was some kind of messiah or prophet, and that wasn't really acceptable to a lot of people. But I was saying right from the beginning "I am not a messiah; I'm not a prophet; I'm not any of those things." Those are just concepts' (p. 14).

Prem Rawat's apparent divergence from the views of his followers who had flocked to him from the counterculture is important to the central thesis of this book. The next chapter will explore this discrepancy in the context of countercultural expectations and in the process attempt to throw a more nuanced light on understanding such concepts as Easternization, occulture, New Age and festival culture and in the context of the disintegration of the late- 1960s counterculture from the early 1970s.

149 Counterculture, occulture and Easternization revisited

Throughout I have argued that Prem Rawat was an unlikely candidate to appear at Glastonbury Fayre and emerge as the leading counterculture Indian guru in the early 1970s. Nothing in his outer appearance or upbringing suggested an aflinity with Western counterculture, although Morgan points out that Divine Light Mission (DLM) was the most westernized of all the Eastern-based movements and that Prem Rawat would normally dress in a suit as opposed to the Indian garb of other gurus (1973: 94). He also notes the male followers dressed similarly (ibid.), even though Kent observed that the women wore the typical clothing of counterculture styles of the period (2001: Xv). Prem Rawat was not a long-haired bearded yogi in the vein of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or a monk of an established devotional Hindu sampradaya such as Bhaktivendanta Swami, who had both preceded Prem Rawat to the West. In both these two gurus who attracted counterculture individuals in both the United States and Britain, there was arguably an aflinity with countercultural spiritual interest in India. The playful bhakti of Krishna in which mischief, dance and music interacted with a sexuality implicit in the Gopi tales and the love between Krishna and Radha would have struck a chord with the playfulness and the erotic inherent in the 'flower-power' generation. Mahesh Yogi looked the part of an Eastern sage and had attracted the Beatles and other celebrities to his teachings.

Prem Rawat, on the other hand, was a child of a middle-class Indian family, living in a bungalow of the former British garrison town of Dehradun, attending a well-known British-founded Roman Catholic school when he came to London in 1971 and conventionally dressed in North Indian white pyjama and kurta. He would quickly adopt a suit and tie when addressing Western audiences and it is highly unlikely that he was aware of the music that was being created by the 1960s counterculture. However, Charnanand, the mahatma who had been sent to the West, had lived with counterculture individuals and had been in close

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with the geographical concentrations of counterculture in London. Charnanand would joke that the inner sound reached through one of the four techniques taught by Prem Rawat sounded similar to Pink Floyd, and he would comment on his audiences in West London that 'they were called "hippies" but I would call them "happies" ' (1996: 4).

There was only a slight aflinity between the festival culture developing within the counterculture and manifested at Woodstock, the Isle of Wight and Reading in the late 1960s and the events in India in which Prem Rawat or his father would speak. In these Indian events, tens of thousands would gather to sit under large colourful canopies, all would be fed free of charge from giant outdoor kitchens, musicians would sing traditional Hindu and Muslim devotional music and speakers would address the gathered crowds with Prem Rawat's message, including references to love, inner peace, self-realization and the nature of God. The mood of these events was joyous and would rise to ecstatic when Prem Rawat would address the audience in the late evening. Many would stand and dance or shout greetings of praise to the young guru. The first individuals from Britain and the United States had attended these events and brought back with them eye-witness accounts to counterculture audiences in London and, later, Los Angeles and Boulder, Colorado.

In the early 1970s, Prem Rawat would address thousands of Western premies gathered together for three-day festivals that would incorporate elements of festival culture combined with the traditional elements of the Indian events. These occasions lacked the Dionysian hedonism of Western rock or folk venues and there was definitely an absence of mind-altering substances. Consciousness transformation was achieved by meditation, listening and intense bhakti (devotional love). Arguably, the early counterculture devotees would notice the parallels to festival culture; they had attended psychedelic music venues in London, free concerts in Hyde Park and returned home to Britain in 1969 and 1970 to hear about the Isle of Wight, and they made comparisons with what they had experienced in India. Early events with P

Prem Rawat were organized by them and the increasing number of countercultural individuals flocking to the guru in the early 1970s, with elements drawn from festivals of the era. The changes in dress codes observed by Kent in 1974, Where he notes 'as a twenty-two year old hippie, I noticed that many others in the audience looked like "freaks" (as we called ourselves) the male devotees looked like business school aspirants - but I realized that, not long before, they probably had been scruffy and long-haired like me' (ibid.). Kent's observations arise from changes that took place from 1973 and are key to understanding the tensions inherent

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in Easternization. The reasons for the transformation were not superficial and require analysis. Ironically, they were initiated by Prem Rawat's mother and the Indian mahatmas, both of whom remained essentially Hindu in lifestyle and dress codes.

The case study of Prem Rawat and his changing relationship with the counterculture throughout the decade of the 1970s has provided a real-life scenario that permits a more nuanced reflection on Easternization and occulture in the context of late- 1960s and 1970s hippie subculture. In the case of the former, I have argued that it requires a degree of uncoupling from occulture, especially in regard to the complex and changing relationship between Easternization and Western esotericism from that which existed pre-Second World War or even in the 1950s. To further complicate matters, 'Easternization' as a categorization urgently needs to be assessed in the light of recent scholarship on the breadth and depth of what is labelled 'Hinduism' with all of its many offshoots, some that even refuse to be defined within that spectrum of belief and practice and offer themselves up as opposition to such categories. Qcculture, too, has its problems. In the medley of beliefs and practices that Partridge labels 'occulture' and also defined as 'senso lato', it may be the case that particular tropes of belief come together to form a fit with certain new religious movements (NRMs) or groupings within New Age to create a bridge across to particular subgroups without embracing the full bricolage or even rejecting large parts of the bricolage.

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The relationship between occulture and Easternization can even be fraught, and, in some cases, the mix of the two can supply meaning that is far from that desired by the founder figure. In such instances, constant negotiation and transformation became the norm, undermining the usual sociological processes of institutionalization. In the 1970s, the 'flower-power' counterculture was fragmenting, developing new forms, reassessing radical politics, festival culture, high culture, gender and the full range of technologies of the self. Prem Rawat arrived in the UK and visited the United States, rapidly established a movement at the fulcrum of these changes taking place and, in part, was instrumental in the direction that such transformations took. I have argued that attending Glastonbury Fayre was pivotal in his decision making.

Easternization and essentialism

It is clear that Eastern ideas infiltrated the Western counterculture, picking up speed as the decade of the 1960s progressed and introducing NRMs transported by Indian gurus, providing an impetus to already existing beliefs such as karma or reincarnation introduced earlier through colonial encounter with the orient or influencing the direction of popular music. However, the label of Easternization to this phenomenon risks essentializing a very ancient and diverse set of traditions that comprise Hinduism and Buddhism, already oversimplified by the World Religion's model that has held sway for decades over the academic study of religion. It has been posited that Hinduism requires analysis as 'Hinduisms' as opposed to a discrete bordered entity with a common set of characteristics. Richard King describes the creation of Hinduism as a discrete world religion as a 'Western inspired creation' (1999: 98). Buddhism's spread across Asia developed spiritual worldviews as diverse as Tibetan tantra or Iapanese Zen schools. Even as far back as 1966, Robert Slater was warning against such essentialism. He states, 'Umbrella terms such as Christianity and Buddhism are deceptive as they tend to obscure the rich diversity of belief and practice to be found within these and other traditions' (Lewis and Slater, 1966: 2). I have argued against the 'world religions' construct as failing to recognize the complexity of religions or recognize how such labels have been framed in the history of colonial domination of the East (Geaves 2005b). The essentializing of Islam as a single homogeneous entity has been particularly difficult for the Muslim presence in the West where the heterodox complexity of Islamic belief and practice has been placed at risk by both right-wing rhetoric and revivalist

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movements trying to establish themselves as orthodoxies in the Muslim world. This tendency to essentialize also applies to Eastern teachings arriving in the West, especially those introduced by a number of Indian teachers arriving in the late twentieth century, who were often demonized as cult leaders.

I have drawn heavily on scholars who challenge the essentializing of Indian religions including my interventions in 1998 and 2005. Sutcliffe would bring these critiques of method in the study of religions to the study of New Age spirituality, arguing that problems of definition were a 'fresh and pressing example of how our concepts (continue to) construct our data' (2013: 17). He makes the case that New Age studies have been guilty of understanding the clusters of spirituality as marginal exoticisms only because the World Religions paradigm has been accepted as a normative reality rather than a constructed scholarly convention. Sutcliffe asserts, 'Read against the grain of the World Religions paradigm, new age phenomena show continuities with a level of popular belief and practices expressed within and across a range of different religious traditions' (ibid.). Sutcliffe's argument is compelling and enables Easternization to be assessed not as a given reality of tendencies within counterculture but instead as a problematic label that fails to grasp the complexity of how Eastern religious ideas and movements have entered into Western comprehension of transcendence.

Gilhus takes Sutcliffe's critique further and notes a number of terminology problems. She agrees with Sutcliffe that terms used in categorizing 'New Age' or 'New Religious Movements', 'spirituality' or 'alternative spirituality' posit a relationship where the objects of study are perceived as secondary or subsidiary to established religious tradition (2013: 35). She also affirms Sutcliffe's point that these terms began as emic but were translated into the etic without a sufficient analysis of their intellectual baggage (p. 36). In addition, she notes that the terminology tends to turn a 'huge diversity into one unity' and also fails to recognize that these entities are fluid, a project in the making (p. 37). A final observation recognizes that all too often language categories such as 'spiritual' or 'New Age' refer predominantly to the narrative and mythic dimensions of religion and are therefore 'reductionistic in a way that is not especially fruitful in relation to the multi-layered formation which they aim to describe' (pp. 36-7). All of these problemizings of terminology and method are relevant to comprehend the changing relationship of Prem Rawat to the counterculture.

One of the challenges for sociologists of religion or even scholars of contemporary manifestations of religion in the West is constructing the full history or complexity of religious movements that have arrived in the West in recent times. Otherwise, assessments that treat this phenomenon as the impact

154 Prem Rawat and Counterculture of Easternization

on contemporary spirituality will fail to recognize that these teachers represented a diversity of traditions that had historically arisen over millennia in India.

These religious groupings created by Indian gurus and their followers demonstrate differing strands of Indian religious life but may have historical oppositions to each other, combined with remarkable diversity of individual negotiation of the beliefs and practices once transported to the West. Robert Iackson has argued that the tradition may be a reference point but that the individual, although influenced through membership of the group, is nevertheless unique (1997). In addition, the Indian subcontinent is characterized by pluralism and diversity which does not conform easily to systematized patterns of religious data and conceptual frameworks imposed by Western scholarship (Geaves, 1998). Richard Eaton's observation that there is a need for contextualized study of particular religious and explanatory discourses is pertinent to this debate on Easternization}

Counterculture critique of Easternization

Timothy Leary had realized the superficiality of counterculture's appropriation of the East and had become wary. Writing from Fulsom Prison in 1973, he advises people to 'reject the "Hindu trap" he had earlier embraced, with its "soft, sweet, custard mush" of unity' (Davis, 2015: 644). The American historian Theodore Roszak comments on the eroticization of Eastern traditions, especially the embracing of tantric traditions by counterculture, arguing that 'nothing is so striking about the new orientalism as its highly sexed flavour' (Roszak, 1969: 135). Ieffrey Kripal notes that ISKCON combined asceticism with 'rich emotional-devotional orientations' (2007a: 14) and argues that Eastern traditions were appropriated not to reproduce them in the West but rather to utilize them to 'encode and entextualize a new democratic-erotic body no longer bound to a traditional religious register' (p. 26). Kripal calls this a 'religion of no-religion' and claims that 'it sparkled at the heart of the countercultural experience' (ibid.). Kripal disagrees with Roszak's view that the asceticism at the heart of Vedanta popularized in the first half of the twentieth century had been replaced by Hindu and Buddhist tantra in the second half of the century with a new emphasis on the sensuous (p. 14). Instead, he observes that the argument is too simplistic as asceticism would remain in many Indian movements arriving in the 1960s, a point that is valid for the early DLM whose Indian origins lay in Vedanta. The

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point here is that each movement requires individual analysis of why it would prove popular among countercultural elements. There is considerable difference between the intense personal devotion to Krishna that was advocated by Swami Prabhupada and had its origins in the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534), a Bengali ecstatic, and the mass consumption of a mantra promoted by Mahesh Yogi, whose own origins lie in Advaita Vedanta. Similarly, the tantric elements that combined so effectively with the Human Potential Movement in the teachings and practices of Rajneesh differ substantially from the iconoclastic antinomianism of the solitary sant, the closest 'fit' that, I have argued, works to categorize Prem Rawat's place in the history of religions.

Sant iconoclasm

I have drawn upon Rawlinson's (1997) categories to begin the process of avoiding essentializing the Easternization that arrived with the Indian gurus relocating their traditions primarily among Western countercultures in the 1960s. Rawlinson's categories have the benefit of being developed to explore counterculture manifestations of Eastern spirituality, but the downside is that they were created to correspond to Western teachers who taught Eastern spirituality rather than the gurus or masters who originated the practices and beliefs. In the case of Prem Rawat, it could be argued that he transcended these binaries as he left India when only 13 years old, married a member of the West Coast counterculture at 16, raised four children in London and Los Angeles and never returned to India as a national.

Prem Rawat would appear to cross several of Rawlinson's categories, including 'embodiment of the truth' (p. 30), 'authorisation from a teacher' (p. 18), 'setting up on their own' (ibid.), 'living in accordance with a transcendental source' (p. 28) or even 'belonging to a Hindu sub-tradition' (p. 17). Some of these would appear to be in opposition to each other and might better describe different stages of Prem Rawat's life and teaching. Yet from an early age, he exhibited signs of accepting the authorization given his father while simultaneously setting up on his own. Early DLM exhibited signs of being a Hindu subtradition and most followers accepted wholeheartedly that their teacher 'lived in accordance with a transcendental source' or even incarnated such a source. Yet the degree to which this was constructed out of a mix of Hindu ideas of an avatar combined with messianic return borrowed from Christianity, rather than Prem Rawat's understanding of his place in the world of Indian spirituality, is complex to

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unravel. I was tempted to turn towards Rawlinson's category of the followers of Eastern gurus as 'those who travelled on the inner path' (p. 29) as this is how he frames DLM. The problem is that Rawlinson also falls into the error made by many - that is, Prem Rawat's organizational forms were part of the modern phenomena of Sant Mat, epitomized by Radhasoami offshoots.

To develop a more nuanced understanding of Prem Rawat, I have moved towards Gold's (1987) and Vaudeville's (1987) studies of sant phenomena as a way of avoiding the more simplistic 'inner Hinduism' described by Rawlinson (1997), which may have described some of the beliefs of early DLM members but is not adequate to situate Prem Rawat. Gold has the benefit of categorizing various stages of sant development and these are helpful to burrow down deeper into what occurred when Prem Rawat came to the West and DLM was established around the time of Glastonbury Fayre and the later deconstruction of both Indian and counterculture values simultaneously existing side by side in DLM. Gold posited three stages in the life of a sant lineage. It begins with a solitary figure such as Kabir, Nanak or Ravidas where authority is derived from personal charisma, and it is highly unlikely that there is any intention of beginning a panth (sectarian institution). In this scenario, the followers of an individual sant are not part of an overarching formal organization but are united with their teacher in being committed to the value of personal experience. A lineage is created by disciples who became noteworthy sants in their own right; usually, a disciple is chosen to continue as the guru by the original sant. A sant lineage is called a parampara as long as the dominant focus of spiritual power is still contained in a living holy person who has succeeded the original sant master. The term panth is used for the final phase of a sant lineage, when it has become a sectarian institution which claims to spread the teachings of the past sant(s), but the dominant focus of spiritual power now resides in ritual forms and scripture often developed from the writings or speeches of the founder sant(s). A panth is usually headed by a mahant (religious functionary, normally a celibate monk) and a committee that looks after the ritual and administration (p. 85).

In this analysis of India's sant tradition, DLM manifested some of the elements of a parampara as the young guru had been chosen by his father to continue his mission and take it to the world. However, because Prem Rawat was a minor when he inherited his father's work, his mother and senior mahatmas had developed an institutional structure with some panth characteristics, ostensibly to assist the child-master until he reached adulthood (Geaves, 2004a, 2007). This interpretation of events would hold together if it is assumed that Prem Rawat was merely a hereditary successor to an established parampara. His departure

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from India ruptured any sense of continuity from the past and provided the door for the young sant to proclaim his own authority and establish his work as he wanted it to manifest.

If Prem Rawat is understood as a 'solitary figure' as described by Gold, it becomes necessary to understand the type of authority that these sant masters invested themselves with. Although Gold speaks of 'personal charisma', this needs elaboration.

Sant iconoclasm as counterculture

Charlotte Vaudeville describes a sant as a holy man of a rather special type, who cannot be accommodated in the traditional categories of Indian holy men - and he may just as well be a woman. The Sant is not a renunciate He is neither a yogi nor a siddha, practices no asanas, boasts of no secret bhij mantras and has no claim to magical powers. The true Sant wears no special dress or insignia, having eschewed the social consideration and material benefits which in India attach to the profession of asceticism The Sant ideal of sanctity is a lay ideal, open to all; it is an ideal which transcends both sectarian and caste barriers. (1987: 36-7)

When such sants chose to promote their worldview to a wider public in India, they appeared to both Hindu and Islamic orthodoxies as spiritual countercultural figures who denied the religious constructions that the elite members of such orthodoxies believed to be time-honoured truths. Such sant missionary activity tended to be people's movements in that they drew upon vernacular language to transmit their message, reached out to both women and the dispossessed in Indian society and proclaimed a form of egalitarianism based upon God's immanent presence within the human being. This is true of Prem Rawat who attracts thousands of rural people including those of low caste and women. I

Juergensmeyer describes sants as regarded by all Hindus as 'innovators, religious radicals, rebels against prevailing orthodoxies and the social institutions related to them' (1991: 23). Sant spirituality affirms an interiority that, at best, believes that exterior forms of religion are irrelevant or even counterproductive to the realization of truth. In Indian religious history, the sants have been critical of the Hindu pantheon, caste systems and most forms of religious hierarchy including yogis and Brahmins and have condemned asceticism as having no impact on realization.

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I have defined Prem Rawat as a 'solitary Sant' as a way of drawing together Gold's 'solitary figure' and Vaudeville's understanding of a 'holy man' outside of the usual parameters of Indian religious and social life and have called this particular twentieth-century manifestation of the sant phenomena 'the de-traditionalized "religion" of Prem Rawat' (2009). In my understanding, 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 and as such are more often found in opposition to the variety of Hindu worldviews.

Various Eastern-origin movements that formed in the West would challenge Leary's perception of a "'soft, sweet, custard mush" of unity', as they would to varying degrees rival each other's worldview. They would often perceive each other through the lens of Hindu-origin sampradaya (sect) construction, modified in each case by the individual vision of the respective teacher and Western adaptations. ISKCON devotees would criticize Prem Rawat's premies for their dismissal of Hindu avatars as objects of contemporary veneration, and premies would consider the ritual temple worship of the Krishna devotees pointless. Yet each would emphasize experience as primary in the quest for the divine, even though their respective attitudes towards the ritual and mythic dimensions of religion would vary. In the teachings promoted by DLM, the authority of the master was paramount and the 'solitary sant' typology was regarded as divinity. Juergensmeyer states that the sant considers all religious authority as invalid with only one exception, that is, that of the 'devoted follower of the Lord, whose own achievements in spiritual matters enable him or her to serve as a model for others' (1991: 23). Gold points out that in sant discourse the 'holy man' of the sant tradition is considered to outshine even the major gods of the Hindu pantheon (1987: 86). In sant terminology, this type of teacher is given the title 'satguru' (the true guru) and has extraordinary transformative powers, primarily expressed as the ability to qualify his devotees for knowledge of the formless divine (ibid.). The guru in India is generally regarded as more accessible and trustworthy even than the gods (1987: 175) but can lead to the conviction among sants that the satguru is the highest incarnate being. This intense gurubhakti had resulted in many in India regarding Prem Rawat as an avatar of Krishna or Ram. These views were prevalent among the mahatmas and the family members of Prem Rawat and were inculcated by the early premies, especially those who visited India to meet the guru there, but there were very early signs that Prem Rawat wanted to focus on the experience on offer rather than Indian hagiographical and mythological interpretations of guruship.

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After his appearance at Glastonbury Fayre and his subsequent visit to the United States, Prem Rawat's fame would spread through the counterculture like wildfire. Michael Finch disputes the figures but agrees that the growth was phenomenal. He notes that the small handful of followers who had sat 'around Maharaji's feet only two or so years earlier [1971] had mushroomed into a multi- million dollar enterprise, with perhaps 100,000 premies in 480 centers in over 30 Western countries' (2009: 110). The word would spread through the same networks or clusters of counterculture that also told each other about the latest batch of LSD. Helen recounts how she lived in Boulder and attended Swami Satchitananda's Integral Yoga Institute. Une day she stopped by there and she noted that about twenty people who had previously lived there had disappeared. She recounts that almost 'everybody had gone to follow Guru Maharaj Ji' (Downton, 1979: 38).

On her journey to Prem Rawat, she also consults the I-Ching and Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass for advice on accepting a guru, attends meetings of Rinpoche Trungpa, reading his books Meditation in Action and Born in Tibet, and practiced Johrei, the channelling of divine light taught by the Japanese movement, the Church of World Messianity (pp. 38-43). Shortly after this, she would meet 'Sam and Iulie who are both deeply into meditation' (p. 42). Julie's language is surprisingly Christian. She speaks of Prem Rawat as the 'same spirit as the Christ' (p. 43). This blending of Eastern and Christian language requires

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investigation. We have already mentioned Paul Schnabel's claim that the divinity of the guru is a standard element of Eastern religion, but when removed from its cultural context, and combined with the 'Western understanding of God as a father', what the difference between the guru's person and that which the guru symbolizes is lost and can result in a limitless personality worship (1982: 142). When Schnabel's observation is combined with Stewart's understanding that receiving cultures first accommodate terms and concepts from another tradition and appropriate them (2003: 586-8), a more complex picture emerges than Downton's view that Eastern understandings of God replaced Judeo-Christian ones.

David Smith points out that there is no 'thorough academic study of the Hindu aspect of what is often called the guru phenomenon' (2003: 168), and he goes on to list a number of characteristics, shared by some but not all gurus:

1. The guru requires submission from the disciple, whose limited powers of reason might inhibit understanding of superior truth.

2. A standard procedure in guru/ disciple relationships is a process of initiation (diksha) in which a disciple is given a secret Sanskrit phrase (mantra) for either internal remembrance or external chanting.

3. A guru may either assert his authority by simply convincing people through his charisma or alternatively lay claim to authenticity through a recognized lineage.

4. Gurus are commonly held to have special powers, at least the ability to read their disciples' thoughts or possibly healing powers.

5. Gurus are often renunciates belonging to one of Hinduism's principal renunciate orders.

6. Gurus may claim to be an avatar of a deity, the supreme being or an avatar of a previous guru or at least the direct and immediate representative of God (l67-73).

Smith's characteristics are useful to describe the treatment of gurus in many Hindu movements but Daniel Gold's in-depth study of the sant tradition focused on the sophisticated theology that has developed around the sant master and his/her relationship with the divine is more useful. He states, 'North Indian devotion, then, presents holy men and singular personalities as substantial beings who manifest channels of grace in the world' (1987: 25). The devotee gains access to such channels. Gold continues his analysis by arguing that the antinomian outlook of the 'solitary sant' leaves devotees only with the option to find the source of the divine in the holy man alone (p. 31). He says, 'The disciple,

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moreover, could also recognize hidden links to the guru, knowing the guru as a being who manifested within him - a being finally one with the Formless Lord. The Sant could then stand as a channel of grace independent of both Hindu and Islamic heritages' (p. 31). In sant traditions, a focus develops on purifying, controlling or negating the 'mind stuff' through a yogic outlook towards spiritual life but it is combined with an intense devotion to the sant master that does not depend on a system of ritual (ibid.).

Sant synergy with 1960s counterculture

Prior to the 1960s, some countercultural elements would have been familiar with the poetry of some Sufi mystics who had expressed something of the sant's iconoclasm and numinous sense of immanence as opposed to Islam's outer ritual forms. Uthers would have come into contact with the revival of Sant Mat found in Radhasoami groups. George Harrison would introduce the music and lifestyles of the Bauls of Bengal in 1971 to counterculture audiences attending his concert in aid of Bangladesh. It is not clear to what degree Western counterculture individuals at the time were aware of the synergy that existed between their own relationship with prevailing social order and that of the sants, but it is likely that they would have been attracted to the Prem Rawat's brand of 'religion of no-religion' (Kripal, 2007a) or as I have described it 'traditionless tradition' (2009: 25), without realizing its roots in Indian spirituality. It could be posited in Prem Rawat's case that the initial acceptance of Western counterculture travellers to the East arose from the sant propensity to accept the downtrodden and alienated within society and this was responded to by encounters with the guru by counterculture individuals as he toured Britain and North America. All this has to be placed within the context of the spiritual move eastwards within counterculture and the move towards the globalization of Eastern traditions that began with Vivekananda.

Prem Rawat's personal charisma owed itself to a combination of factors. His young age, his ability to speak spontaneously drawing upon real-life experiences, anecdotes and his own experience, rather than scriptural interpretation, and the intense devotion of his following based upon their own inner experiences combined with an already developing hagiography led to the conviction of an individual master, uncluttered by tradition or acknowledgement of any outer authority. It is the emphasis on experience over faith that marks out Prem Rawat's message. As he says in an interview in 1996, 'The proof is in itself. You

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feel, you experience, you enjoy. That is the proof' (p. 14). I have described this emphasis on experience as 'charisma relating to the experiential dimension' (Geaves, 2005a). Prem Rawat and his father before him were known in India for their emphasis on experiential knowledge and its transformative qualities and the lives of counterculture individuals who accepted him as their teacher were, in many cases, undoubtedly transformed.

It is this emphasis on seeking the primacy of the present moment as the only opportunity to grasp the reality of the divine within that would possess appeal to the counterculture's desire for immediacy and tapping the limits of experience. Yet they are different. Spontaneity can often be an act of desire fulfilment in the immediate now, whereas Prem Rawat would be more inclined to advise caution in pursuing the mind's desires. Checks would be placed on the hedonism of the counterculture. In addition, Prem Rawat's teaching emphasized an 'embodied theology', one in which the divine was literally enveloped within and throughout the living human being, rather than found in churches, temples or sacred texts and places. The source to discover this divinity was the 'here and now' rather than in an afterlife. An analysis of the primary encounters between counterculture individuals who became students of Prem Rawat reveals little emphasis on the discursive. It has already been shown that the meeting that took place in Glastonbury Fayre was not perceived in terms of understanding but feeling. It is this dichotomy of feeling and understanding, heart and mind, that would baffle Stephen Kent and lead him to describe the message as 'banal' (2001: xvi) but Andrew Tweedie, who photographed the Fayre, when asked if he had 'a Glastonbury experience' answered, 'Yes, but I don't know what it was' (Midsummer Magic, 1996: 20). David Lovejoy comments on the young Prem Rawat's stillness. He describes his first encounter, 'I only recall the stillness emanating from the form of Maharaji himself. I can't say I noticed his physical being very much. All the energy and activity in that place seemed to depend upon him, started and finished with him, while he never moved at all, wrapped in this profound stillness' (2005: 71-3). Peter Lee also comments on his stillness (1996: 19). The Divine Times Special Edition contains a number of accounts of first encounters with Prem Rawat that comment on his presence of being, his brightness and a powerful presence. The language to describe the moment is affective. Richard Profumo, an early American student, declared that 'this young man knew and spoke from a place of experience. He came from the heart and he spoke to the heart' (1996: 15). Transformation could take place after these encounters with Prem Rawat. Access to the young guru was relatively easy in these early years but most counterculture individuals would access the message

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first through the grapevine. Many would be impressed by the transformations that they would see manifested in the lives of close associates. Rennie Davis would describe how he encountered many leftist veterans in DLM, and it was their presence in the movement which persuaded him to explore the guru's message (Kent, 2001: 49-50).

Occulture and Easternization

If Eaton's work warns us to take note of particular religious and explanatory discourses, Tony Stewart's (2003) work reveals how a receiving culture first accommodates terms and concepts from another tradition and appropriates them (pp. 586-8). He argues that this is not evidence of syncretism or identity construction but rather different conceptual worlds meeting each other. Stewart's critique of syncretism is vital to understanding how the counterculture embraced the East and highly pertinent to the tensions that would create and ultimately destroy DLM. For example, Rennie Davis, as a former radical peace activist, had worked frustratingly in many organizations. Michael Rossman would describe this as 'despair' caused by 'their outer impotence, their inner conflicts and ego games and wasted energies' (1979: 22). He would describe Davis as seeking the same ends by different means and this would lead Davis to herald DLM as a 'perfect organization' where the 'ideals of peace and justice' could be achieved not by 'struggle and conflict' but by its 'perfect working' (Kent, 2001: 49).It is highly unlikely that Prem Rawat saw it that way or even considered DLM as the appropriate vehicle for his message. Nor was the practice of Knowledge a means to a leftist utopia.

Stewart's understanding of 'different conceptual worlds' needs to be borne in mind when assessing the thesis that posits occulture as a continuing stream of development from the late nineteenth century through to the present day and providing an ever-shifting bricolage of Eastern ideas and practices within Western esotericism. This is certainly true when assessing the counterculture of the early 1970s. Earlier movements that arrived from the East, for example, Radhasoami, and the Sufi Grder of the West attracted a Western upper-middle- class membership, some of whom had travelled in the East or had been influenced by theosophical ideas or were interested in spiritualism. Arguably, both these movements offered a more authentic contact with Eastern spirituality than the East-West occulture manifested in theosophy but they also permitted a fusion of Indian spirituality and Western esotericism. In Roszak's view, an eroticized

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tantra had replaced an ascetic Vedanta. He writes about late-twentieth-century counterculture as being a new departure from earlier manifestations. In somewhat eloquent terms, he describes the difference:

One always has the feeling in looking through its literature that its following was found among the very old or very withered, for whom the ideal swami was a kindly orientalised version of an Irish Jesuit priest in charge of a pleasant retreat

Certainly, it would appear that these older- generation followers of earlier arrivals from the East found countercultural interest in their movements problematic. This conflict between two generations is described by Aziz Deukasis, a teacher in the Sufi Order of the West.

There were two types of murids - the dopeheads who were getting high and singing Allah and the old people who had met Murshid (the title given to Hazrat Inayat Khan) and they were very different. The old ones were establishment with money. The old people were really insulted by the long hair, the dirt and the barefootedness of the hippies. (Geaves, 2000: 76)

In view of these apparent differences between the generations, it would be useful to examine the spectrum of previous beliefs, both from Eastern influences and Western esotericism, that had developed among counterculture individuals that would discover Prem Rawat.

A number of narratives of transformation describe the literature being read leading up to meeting Prem Rawat. David Lovejoy states that 'naturally I was devouring books related to religion and cosmic consciousness, from William Iames to Gurdjieff and from Huxley's Perrenial Philosophy to the Upanishads' (2005: 47-8). He also mentions Timothy Leary's and Richard Alpert's edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, although this seems to have been more utilized as a guidebook to developing mystical states through LSD usage (ibid.). Mike Finch was first influenced by the books of Yogi Ramacharaka, who he believed to be an 'Indian Yogi' but in reality was an early-century American theosophist. He would go on to explore Paul Brunton and then quickly moved on to attempt to live a spiritual life in an Anglican Benedictine monastery and later a Thai Theravada Buddhist temple (2009: 15-17). Downton's study of DLM in the early 1970s provides a number of such narratives. Literature emerges as one route towards countercultural spirituality and transformation, with mentions of Siddhartha, The Aquarian Gospel, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Be Here Now, Ouspensky's In

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Search of the Miraculous and the writings of Carl Jung. My interviews with early students of Prem Rawat reveal that they were reading not only the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads but also the works of medieval Christian mysticism, notably The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471).

Downton considers that 'religious books played a surprisingly strong role in the spiritual awakening of these premies, as nearly all of them had become acquainted with spiritual literature through their friends and relatives' ( 1979: 1 19). Uthers had spent time in a variety of Eastern spiritual movements including TM, the Integral Yoga Institute, practising Hatha Yoga or trying by themselves to meditate. The revealing factor about such accounts is that it becomes clear that Eastern spirituality was the dominant influence with little reference to Western esotericism, but it is apparent that the writings of the earlier generation were influential. Christian teachings are not dismissed completely even though most are negative towards Christian institutions. When this literature is surveyed, it reveals a strong interest in mysticism rather than esotericism, and the interest in Huxley shows a strong tendency towards perennialism, the idea of a common mystical experience underlying all of the world's major religious systems. Although these books do play a role, there were more important factors at play in forming counterculture spirituality.

Immediacy and high culture

Downton's study of Prem Rawat's students in the early 1970s revealed the impact of psychedelic drug use in the formation of their spirituality. Downton provides a comparison with ISKCON devotees who show slightly less use of psychedelics and among those who have used the drugs, less reported religious experiences as a result of their drug use. Downton concludes that ISKCGN followers were more likely to have been influenced by social factors in their life histories but goes on to say that with regard to Prem Rawat's counterculture followers, 'there is little doubt that psychedelics were an aid in the spiritual awakening of these premies, for they changed their religious outlook, replacing their Iudeo- Christian conception of a personal God with an organic view of God as energy'. Typical of comments made concerning psychedelic spiritual experience were the following: 'I guess drugs started me on a search for unity'; 'Gk, God I know that I have to be one with you'; 'when I tripped my heart just opened up'; 'you really have this sense of a higher order of existence'; 'we are all one' (1979: 102-13).

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One possible reason for the spiritual experiences might have been that LSD was being taken as a 'sacrament'. Individuals who had read Leary, for example, were trying to create an environment in which the potential of psychedelics was harnessed to induce such experiences. David Lovejoy describes such occasions. 'We would start with Indian sitar music and sit meditatively in a room provided with some interesting and beautiful objects until the effects became too strong. Then we would adjourn to the garden and study flowers, cracks in the wall, and sky' (2005: 341). Downton sees these processes as more compatible with Eastern spirituality than Iudeo-Christian worldviews and suggests that their experiences 'acquainted them with a view of God which was quite compatible with Eastern spiritualism. They came to see God as the force holding the universe together and animating all living things' (1979: 111).

The dramatic success of Prem Rawat may be attributed to other sources in which the large-scale use of psychedelics played a vital part. Robert Masters and Iean Houston would appear to confirm that approaches to psychedelic usage as described by Lovejoy would reap spiritual rewards. They state that 'in a setting providing religious stimuli, from seventy-five to ninety percent [of psychedelic subjects] report experiences of a religious or even mystical nature' (1966: 255). This is confirmed by Iane Dunlap who wrote of the 'sudden partial lifting of the veil between what we usually call consciousness and a mental state in which such great unity and completeness is felt' (1961: 8-9). It would seem from an analysis of Downton's cohort that their reading and their LSD experiences were shaping an awareness of perennial philosophy drawn more from the mystical traditions of the world's religions than Western esotericism. Partridge identifies this process succinctly when he states, 'A number of influential thinkers within the modern history of psychedelic mysticism have argued that a perennial philosophy can be established on the basis of pure experience, unmediated by conceptual frameworks' (2018: 18).

The intense use of psychedelics among counterculture individuals on both sides of the Atlantic may have predisposed them to 'psychedelic immediatism' that is 'spontaneous, direct unmediated spiritual insight into reality (typically with little or no prior training) a "pathless path" to religious enlightenment' (Versluis, 2014: 2). In such instances, direct spiritual awakening or enlightenment appears to be possible immediately. Versluis states that the 'immediatist says "away with all ritual and practices" ' (ibid.). If this proposition is accurate, the impact of Knowledge and the usage of the sant message that cuts away or critiques both traditional and orthodox paths of religion by Prem Rawat may well have echoed 'psychedelic immediacy' in the counterculture milieu. DLM's

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promotional literature would also appear to announce 'direct, unmediated insight'. For example, the poster announcing the guru's appearance at Oakland City Auditorium on 9 September 1972 would proclaim, 'Imagine what is peace/ come and realize the practical experience' (Kent, 2001: 49).

Partridge has pointed out that the immediatist position or, for that matter, perennial wisdom is not concerned with the means by which mystical states are arrived at but rather the universal and spontaneous nature of the experience (2018: 18). This was not Prem Rawat's position on the matter. Charnanand would cite drug use as an unlicensed 'back-door entry' to the divine within, citing Ramakrishna's words in Calcutta? Prem Rawat rarely addressed the issue of alternative methods, whether drugs or religious paths, but he did assert the unique nature of the Knowledge experience as incomparable but not necessarily incompatible with the practice of religion. He would usually urge interested seekers to make their own judgements after experiencing what was on offer. In that respect, he may not have been as judgemental as other Eastern teachers. We have seen that a number of gurus were uneasy with hippie drug culture including Meher Baba and Prabupada. In 1972, Prem Rawat answered a direct question concerning why he did not advocate drug use. On being asked the question, 'Why do you want us to leave these drugs?' he replied, 'You used to take drugs, and you say that apparently these drugs brought you to a point. But then you took Knowledge and that was beyond them. So now leave the drugs and proceed purely, proceed naturally' (Downton, 1979: 119). Instant enlightenment did not appear to be an element of the guru's teachings as he advocated a rigorous daily regime of practising withdrawing inwards, combined with service (saiva) and participating in satsang (lit. company of truth), usually taken to mean regular attendance at gatherings of premies.

Messianism, occulture and new age

The title of Gold's book The Lord as Guru could equally have been the 'Guru as Lord', and it is not surprising to find early Western initiates making comparison with the life of Christ. David Lovejoy describes some early students in India asking Prem Rawat if he was Christ (2005: 75-6). It has to be recognized that any answer would carry with it the sant understanding of Iesus as a master similar to the 'solitary figure' described by Gold rather than orthodox Christian interpretations of Christ's role in the Trinity. In other words, it is Stewart's assertion that appropriation is about different cultural worlds rather than

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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 could 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

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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).

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.

Michael Finch describes the speculation as focusing around the belief that there would be 'visitations from extraterrestrial believers' (2009: 120).There were wild rumours abounding that Prem Rawat would use the Astrodome itself as a kind of spacecraft which, similar to Noah's Ark, would save the chosen remnant (ibid.). Sophie Collier, who was involved in the lead-up to the festival, describes an interview with a reporter from Village Voice who she could not divert from the interest in visiting aliens. The article would include the following paragraph: 'Balbhagwan Ji (Prem Rawat's eldest brother) said that a lot of strange things are going to happen in Houston. All of those UFOs that people've been seeing are around the Gulf Coast waiting for the Millennium.' The aliens are described as 12 feet tall and having round gleaming eyes (1978: 177). The article is accurate on one point. The source of the speculation did appear to be Prem Rawat's older brother. Collier describes the speculation as 'Millennium fever' and labels the Guru's brother as the 'fever's carrier'. She writes, 'Between the present time and the time of the festival, according to BB's [Bal Bhagwan Ji] predictions, there would be a series of major disasters, natural and political (including the collapse of Wall Street on November 18th). To augment this would also be a series of extraterrestrial phenomena. All of these things would lead people to seek the return of the messiah' (p. 157).

Sophie Collier's view of the festival's name is more mundane. She replies to one person's claim that after the festival no one will worry about anything because 'after the festival is the New Age'. Her answer is to assert that 'when we decided to call the festival "Millenium" I thought it was because our vision of one peaceful world based on spiritual values was evoked by the word, "Millenium" - not because the hoped-for Millenium will begin on November 8th' (p. 152). 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. The event would leave the mission $600,000 dollars in debt but more significantly it

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Awould create a sea change in Prem Rawat's relationship with the counterculture and its attempts to forge a new world order. Although Thorne Dreyer would write that the 'Maharaj Ji has fused the New Left and the flower children' (1974), 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 accounts of the American followers' religious milieu at the time and the expectations created around Millennium '73 reveal the existence of senso stricto depictions of New Age among countercultural followers from both the political and flower spectrum, fitting precisely to Hanegraaff's definition of an 'esotericism based upon the 1950s interest in UFOs and apocalyptic expectations' (2001). Sutcliffe expanded this understanding drawing upon emic understandings of a millennialistic transformation on a global scale in which a spiritual awakening would take place following the collapse of the capitalist, militaristic and material exploitation of the world (2014: 41). But New Age, senso lato, that is, a broad cluster of esoteric activities that include channelling, healing, spiritual growth and neo-paganism (Chryssides, 2012: 247), was also evident in the milieu that would flock to Prem Rawat in the early 1970s.

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. 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

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teachings set up the possibility of a conflict between his efforts to balance his own commitment to the ideal of a fluid organization and his desire to continue teaching globally. Especially after his experience of religious-building during the DLM stage, Prem Rawat would seek out organizational forms that would work to deal with changing circumstances, often experimenting and dissolving structures that were put in place. Price would argue that DLM transformed itself into a 'sect' marked by a degree of 'epistemological authoritarianism' throughout the early 1970s, although she acknowledged that this was never total and, in reality, a high degree of 'epistemological individualism' existed (1979: 247). However, in spite of this 'epistemological individualism', many followers had begun to take on a very strong exclusivist claim to salvation, combining an epistemology developed from certain devotional forms of Hinduism which contained ideals of monasticism, celibacy and vegetarianism and a range of Hindu-based customs and Christian expectations of a return of Christ at the end time. Together, these would create a powerful emotive epistemology of incarnation in regard to Prem Rawat. Hindu classical avatar (incarnational descent) doctrines with the common attribution of divinity to the guru and strong millennial hopes arising out of a countercultural wish for an end to 'straight society' would merge with Christian hopes of a messiah figure that had little to do with Indian traditions. 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 dfficult 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.

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

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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).

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.