Smug PremThe Sleazy Divine Light Mission Underclass

Decades after events took place some books and articles were published that showed a different aspect of life in DIvine Light Mission (and to a certain extent in Elan Vital).

Both of these books critically record squalid and sordid family lives in Divine Light Misson in England in the 1970s as does Ms Cainer. The guru himself lived a far more sordid and secret life of drugs, luxury and lies but in public, he always taught that his followers should not take drugs, live orderly, somewhat regimented lives and be responsible, loving parents and that following his rules and practising the secret techniques of meditation his organisations taught would keep them on the straight and narrow through bliss, love and higher consciousness. These ideas were proven to be nonsense quite quickly.

The Museum of Lost and Fragile Things: A Year of Salvage by Susan Joinson

Jane Whittington's memoire "Escape of a Whild Child" was depressing enough but at least she was an adult when she chose to become involved in Divine Light Mission & Prem Rawat's "Knowledge" but Suzanne Joinson was a child and had no say in the matter. It is, at times, difficult to believe she is talking about her family's life in Divine Light Mission as I knew it. Australia premies could live quite comfortably on the dole and the sunny climate makes things easier. Maybe I would have seen an underbelly as well if I had ever lived in a city.

It appears her parents were almost in a cult within the cult with their initiator/instructor/controller "Bill" pulling all the strings and preaching a form of DLM dogma that is idiosyncratic and extreme to say the least. He appears to be from a higher class background and claimed he was a chauffeur to the young guru on his second trip to England and is able to select people to "receive Knowledge" or make them think he can. What a scumbag.

To be fair to Prem Rawat, when he was the young Guru Maharaj Ji, he definitely told his followers not to take illicit drugs. Was it just Bill's harem/premies who ignored that agya (the Perfect Master's instructions)? Joinson's father appears stupid, witless, constantly stoned, mouthing rubbish like "Draw him like he's your special friend. That way you can talk to him in your mind. You can call him Master. With each stroke of the pencil, you start to know you love him. Feel it? You know you are ready. Nothing else makes sense, everything else is dust. You can do that through drawing, you know, right?" He even teaches her the meditation techniques. She's a disturbed child. Who wouldn't be in this household? She even tries having her frenulum cut by some other stoned non-premie crazy in a London squat to which she has run away.

Fortunately her father does at least one good thing when she ran away from home. He was waiting around the corner from a squat in London to rescue her when she needed rescuing. Her mother even apologised and at least "Bill" was now sent packing from their lives. Her mother comes across lost, depressed, angry, hateful and spends decades accusing the daughter with suicidal threats.

Lost and Fragile Thing Joinson gets most of her quotes from my site but seems to have looked for ones that resonate with the happenings in their life. She makes some mistakes in the events of DLM's history that ring true, from memory.

"Nineteen eighty-something. Dusk coming in. … "Don't look so sad, Suzy-Sue," Dad said, sucking on a rollie. "It's just paper and dust. Let it all go. It doesn't change how we feel inside." He'd been told to destroy anything with Guruji's face looking too 'Eastern'. Maharaj Ji was changing his look, or, as my dad said, his vibe. Shaking off the whiff of the seventies. "No Mansons, Jonestowns, all that," I'd heard my dad say. "We can still kiss his feet, but in secret now, because it looks too whacky. mention it at school, okay?"

Earlier, he'd burned all his copies of the Divine Times. Then the meditation pamphlets, satsang programmes and rules for ashram living. All gone. But what I couldn't understand was why our photographs had to go."

There had been no commandment to burn personal photos but her father was a fool. There had been instructions to destroy all Divine Light Mission publications and recordings.

"Maharaj Ji," she says, "has declared himself human. Not the Lord. The One. Perfect Master." "What are you supposed to call him now?" I say. "Ultimate Ruler." I laugh. Even Mum laughs and meets my eye, but Bill is fuming.

"Cunt Fucker, Fucking Shit," Bill sighs. He puts his arm around Mum and squeezes her towards him. "I miss the ashram days. You knew where you were, you got the free tea and the special privileges. Ultimate Ruler is just not as romantic, you know?"

As in Whittington's book, once the 80's rolled on there was no longer a pretense of ascetic bliss and peace through meditation but an arrogant attitude that these losers were somehow special through their tenuous association with Maharaj Ji, their secret God. In this book and "A Wild Child's Escape" life in DLM England appears gray, rainy and desolate. The men are sexist, lazy and try to rape a 12 year old girl if it's at all possible and the women are depressed, angry and controlled.

I'm sure there were wealthy, happy premies who enjoyed themselves and very sensibly kept well away from the premie underclass. At least, I hope these stories came from a premie underclass of bongos and are not indicative of the majority of the English Divine Light Missions premies.

A Wild Child's EscapeA Wild Child's Escape by Jane Whittington

Blurbs: This is a true story. It illustrates how a young woman, Jane, gets involved in the dynamic changes happening in the 1960s, and how she gets immersed in a new way of living. She follows the 'hippy trail' to Nepal where she lives with a Nepalese family in their mud hut, and becomes part of the family, fetching water, wood etc., and gaining an insight into living with nature as all cultures did at one time. On her return to the UK, Jane gets involved with an Eastern Cult. The book intimates Jane's mental health difficulties and how these extreme ventures exacerbate her stability even more. It is a frank look at the stark changes of the time and an insight into mental health difficulties and how Jane overcomes these obstacles.

By the time Jane W. leaves the gurus she is no "wild child" but a prematurely aged woman worn down by single motherhood and bad relationships who got through life on the support of the British government, the remnants of the family fortune, some emotional support from other women premies and the pie in the sky bliss of seeing Maharaji at festivals, programs and events.

This bliss quickly fizzled out but it did leave me wondering whether her life may have been even worse without her brief Maharaji blissouts or might she have come to an accommodation with life much earlier had she never been attracted by the surface appearance of 1970s DLM satsangs and then continued living the dysfunctional premie lifestyle for so long.

I do not recommend this book to anyone. It is very depressing. It does provide a picture of premie/PWK life without any rosy tinted glasses and I confess I recalled some women and children (and men) with some similarities in DLM and EV in the sunnier, warmer, less poverty stricken Australia of the 70s and 80s. Single mothers trying to fit hours of meditation into their lives, left behind when single premies jetted off to "Festivals". Men and women with alcohol, drug and emotional problems which were never replaced with bliss and joy.

Many of the premies, dedicated followers of Guru Maharaji -> Prem Rawat lived regular lives conforming to the directions of their guru, no drugs, regular meditation and voluntary service to his organisations. A minority spent up to 10 years living a strictly regulated life in Rawat's ashram system which included mandatory 2 hours meditation, nightly satsang meetings and celibate poverty.

Jonathon Cainer: Success, Wealth and Knowledge Are Not Enough

Jonathan Cainer was one of the most famous and well-paid astrologers on the planet, regularly earning millions a year. He was a very successful newspaper and "Telepnone Help-Line" astrologer, so his success had little to do with ascendants, cusps, ecliptics, cazimi or conjunctions and everything to do with a talent for grifting. He loved women - a lot of them - attention, excitement and chaos. 'He was addicted to drama! He could get addicted to anything - one week he'd be addicted to doing the washing. Next, he'd be up making pizzas - all night, all day,' says Jemima, his daughter.

Jemima had a very troubled relationship with her father and the chaos of her youth. Her mother Melanie was killed in a car crash when Jemima was just two years old - 'I was in the car - I still have memories from it and PTSD - I stopped talking for a while afterwards.'

There were endless women who came and stayed - often with their children in tow - 'we might wake up with some other kids in our bedrooms' - over the years in their rambling old manor house. It takes Jemima a good five minutes - and a diagram - to explain to me who all 'ten or so' of her full and half-siblings are and who all their mothers and fathers were. 'There was lots of communal living and swapping around,' she says.

Thanks to her father, nothing about Jemima Cainer's upbringing was normal which was largely thanks to the influence of the Divine Light Mission (DLM) - a controversial cult led by self-styled 'peace educator' Prem Rewat that began in 1960s India - of which Jonathan was a devoted member from the age of 15. 'We all grew up in the cult,' says Jemima. 'It was all pretty dodgy, so astrology was always one of the straighter things of my childhood.'

When she was little, he'd smoke three cigarettes at once - 'one in his mouth, one burning in the ashtray and one behind his ear, for afterwards,' she says. 'And in later life, it was cocaine and Class A stimulants. So it was intense - really intense - growing up.'

Thanks to her father, nothing about Jemima Cainer's upbringing was normal which was largely thanks to the influence of the Divine Light Mission (DLM) - a controversial cult led by self-styled 'peace educator' Prem Rewat that began in 1960s India - of which Jonathan was a devoted member from the age of 15. 'We all grew up in the cult,' says Jemima. 'It was all pretty dodgy, so astrology was always one of the straighter things of my childhood.'

Jonathan Cainer was one of the most famous and well-paid astrologers on the planet, regularly earning millions a year. He was a brilliant, talented, mercurial astrologer who loved women - a lot of them - attention, excitement and chaos. 'He was addicted to drama! He could get addicted to anything - one week he'd be addicted to doing the washing. Next, he'd be up making pizzas - all night, all day,' says Jemima.

When she was little, he'd smoke three cigarettes at once - 'one in his mouth, one burning in the ashtray and one behind his ear, for afterwards,' she says. 'And in later life, it was cocaine and Class A stimulants. So it was intense - really intense - growing up.'

Mescaline, Maharaj Ji and the Mojave Desert: Abandoned Roads Mescaline, Maharaj Ji and the Mojave Desert: Abandoned Roads

Jos Lammers, ex-President Divine Light Mission, Holland and Director International Operations (Europe and Australia), International Headquarters, Divine Light Mission has written a short but interesting memoire, in Dutch and English that was available from Amazon in which he recounts his life as a university drop-out in 1970 taking too many drugs (he may disagree it was too many :-) and looking for the "meaning of life" who becomes a "premie" of Guru Maharaj Ji. He moves into the ashram where he discovers a talent for business and organisation that makes the Dutch DLM financially successful. So successful that he is called to Denver to join the international executive staff of DLM as Director International Operations (Europe and Australia).

It was there he learnt that even the dedicated executives of DLM indulged in some secret, hypocritical fun including Maharaji's favourites, Gangster movies:

"Exactly there, right in the centre of the Divine Light Mission, other matters too were, to a growing extent, just like the rest of the world. Nobody except his security people, his personal aide and 'president' Bob Mishler ever got to see Maharaj ji himself. But his lifestyle did affect the people that had to arrange it all for him. The job of my ashram mate Joe Schwartz for instance, was to rent films for Maharaj ji whenever he exchanged his 'divine residence' in Malibu California for Denver to discuss business with Bob. As soon as he left for Malibu again, Joe dragged projector, screen and rented films into our ashram, where we in all secrecy and taunted by the strangling question of whether we had now definitely fallen of the path watched Little Big Man and the Godfather. Two favorites of Maharaj ji, Joe assured."

There is a summary of his DLM career here and two excerpts from his book, Abandoned-Roads, here and here.

DENVER (UPI) - Two former top lieutenants of the Guru Maharaj Ji's Divine Light Mission have warned the estimated 15,000 American followers of the 19-year-old spiritual leader they risk a plight similar to that of devotees of the Rev. Jim Jones in Guyana. Robert Mishler, who served as Maharaj Ji's personal secretary and president of the Mission for six years and John Hand Jr., former vice president of the organization, Friday said the guru had displayed behavior patterns similar to those of Jones.

IN AN EXCLUSIVE interview with UPI, the two men said Maharaj Ji had spoken frequently of building a city similar to Jonestown and was infatuated by weapons and gangsters. Mishler and Hand, who were two of only about 15 members that saw the guru's private behavior, said Maharaj Ji was excited by the crime underworld and after viewing the movie "The Godfather," formed a security unit called the "World Peace Corps." "HE IS INFATUATED with the mafia and even tried to arrange a meeting with a New York don," Hand said. "The Mission now has secret stockpiles of weapons." The two former Mission officials said Maharaj Ji's private behavior included physical and sexual assaults on followers by stripping them, pouring abrasive chemical on their bodies, administering psychotropic drugs and having them beaten with sticks or thrown into swimming pools.

The premies, i.e. initiated followers of Divine Light Mission, were expected to follow the ideal life of service, satsang and meditation they believed their Guru Maharaj Ji led. Luckily they didn't know of his obsession with mobsters, gangsters and crime else they might not have been as law abiding as they were. Mostly premies were cavalier about following governmant rules and regulations about living on unemployment and sickness benefits, smoking marijuana and such like. In their defence, they were after all ex-hippies.