Few Can Define Rapture,
But MaharajJi Packs Them In

BARRY BEARAK
Herald Staff Writer

Light, they said, spun through their minds. Hope sprang resliient as sponge. Bliss intoxicated their souls.

Some prayed, some chattered, some giggled. Some just beamed. To them, life sang. Ten thousand of them had just spent two hours Sunday with a 19-year-old they believe is the divine master of the universe.

First, Guru Maharaj Ji, the pudgy, cherub-cheeked Indian holy man they revere, gave an hour-long sermon.

"What people want to do is run from their exploding minds very, very fast," he told devotees at the Miami Beach Converntion Centre. "These minds have trapped them in a valley …"

"There is only one thing to do. Let yourself go, and say, 'Guru Maharaj Ji, pull me out of here.'"

THEN THE GURU spent another hour silent upon a throne framed with flowers. His head barelky turned, his lips never pareted. The crowd, ecstatic, at his mere presence, chanted rock-oriented hymns.

"He's just giving us some chance to sing love songs to him," explained a "premie," the name given

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10,000 Spend Day with Maharaj Ji

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to those initiated with the guru's knowledge.

On Saturday, these same thousands had filed through the Conventlon Center, each getting an opportunity to kneel before their master. After Sunday's service, the close andd climax of a three day service, few could define their rapture.

"Describe what sweet is, or love or joy. You can't do it." said premie Diana Stone, 29, of Boston. "When I try to explain what Guru Maharaj Ji has given me words fall to the floor and shatter to pieces."

Even Bill Patterson, 27, president of the guru's Divine Light Mission, was vague. "This is an awareness inside," he said. "It's an experience, and only Guru Maharaj Ji it has the power to awaken it."

TO SOME A messiah, to some a teacher, to many a crafty charlatan, Maharaj Ji boasts four million followers worldwide.

He speaks of his power to "give knowledge," to alert people to the light and harmony they have within. He preaches peace through meditation. And, though he often alludes to the teachings of others, he claims his route is the shortcut to the sweeter stratum of consciousness.

Once a zealous recruiter, Maharaj Ji has now toned down the push for premies. He lives in Denver and sees outsiders infrequently. The new shyness is perhaps a reaction to a remarkable, though stormy adolescence.

When Maharaj Ji's father - another guru of some repute in India - died in 1965, the spark of his special presence was said to pass to his youngest son., then 8. Indeed, at the elder guru's funeral, Maharaj Ji supposedly stunned mourners by declaring. "Why are you weeping. I am here." lt is said he then captivated the grieving throng with a wellspring of wisdom.

Word of the sagaclous youngster, followers say, spread like a storm. In a few years, Maharai Ji, aided by his family's facility for showmanshlp, headed a swelling church and edged it across the ocean.

IN I971, he came to an America ripe with young people eager to eyeball fashionable gurus. But while some 40,000 were said to have grasped the guru's message, most of the curious were skeptlcal if not openly hostile.

For one thing, American audiences seemed reluctant to heed a chubby teenager whose voice cracked from puberty and nervousness.

Secondly, newspaper stories seemed to allege that the guru was more interested in profits than prophets. Articles about his accumulatlon of worldly luxuries made him appear an unlikely guide through the forests of the soul.

Then, at 16, Maharahii married a premle eight years his senior. An American stewardess. A year 1later his mother denounced his "despicable, non-spirituai way of life." But present-day premiea counter that Maharaj Ji's mother is jealous and spiteful of her son and took criticism of their guru philosophically.

"PEOPLE WHO SEE Guru Maharaj Ji and only see glamor and money are people only looking for glamor and money" said Greg Edwards, 30, of Chicago. "0nly people looking for purpose in their life see the real Maharaj Ji."

And Sunday, a generally well groomed mass mostly in their twenties claimed they saw the "real" Maharaj Ji. And his presence seemed to make them float.

"I'm happier," Diane Stone said. "than I ever imagined could be possible."