Frank Starrs' story ends on a high, his life did not. I can't see that much blame can be put on Divine Light Mission and it's members who showed him remarkable patience and tolerance. On the other hand, it's Knowledge did not help him at all. Note: Bats do not excrete from their mouths.

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Page 6     THE DIGGER No 36

THE KNOWLEDGE IS NOT CHOCOLATE

CONFESSIONS OF A RENEGADE PREMIE

by Frank Starrs

Divine Light Mission Public Relations Officer for Victoria, in a letter to Digger, June 27 1973.

As the activities of the mission create greater public reaction, your paper will be responsible for accurate and clear interprelation and communication … - John C. H. Perry,

"Religion is the relaxa-tab of the masses." - A. Robertson.

The Story So Far:

Born into a Catholic family the eldest of nine, my earliest memory is a picture of Jesus crucified. I asked my father about it and he explained that it was God who came down to Earth and was killed for our sins.

Later on I joined a Catholic seminary and trained to be a priest for three and a half years. But when my father died I left the seminary and gradually drifted into a life of drugs and debauchery interspersed with revolution, flowers, acting and writing. I feature in the film Dalmas, screaming on a lonesome beach.

Too much LSD sent me right around the bend in ways too horrific to mention until I suddenly found myself suited, married to Maggie, settled in a solid job at Feedwell Foods, and meditating three hours a morning to still my "crazy mind". Religion had returned to my life.

I began to have experiences of God, give up sex, hear voices, see visions, talk to trees, and do all the other things that dottily ecstatic religious maniacs do. We had a baby and when he was three months old Maggie went beserk with too much religion and was carted off to Royal Park by the police. I looked after the baby (David), and over the next two months of Maggie being drugged into a zombie and my losing all my friends, I was gradually thrown more and more into the realization that I was totally alone in the world. And that I could not handle. When would God come and rescue me?

Now Read On:

I was staying at my mother's place in Adelaide. Maggie had returned but was constantly in a drugged stupor. My mother said it was all my fault because I had left the Church and had never thought of anyone but myself.

I was looking after David. One night he was crying and I suddenly didn't have the strength or the will any more to comfort him. I just left him. Next morning I didn't get out of bed (I had been a five or six o' clock riser for the previous 18 months) because I couldn't see any reason to. I couldn't understand why God had put me in such a mess.

Then the name Guru Maharaj Ji popped into my head. Three of my sisters had taken knowledge and were proselytising me. Now it seemed there was nowhere else to go. I got out of bed singing the Beatles' song "Help, I need somebody, etc." and rushed down to the local Divine Light Mission where my sisters welcomed me with open arms. It was nice to have someone welcome me. I thought "Here is where I belong". Mahatma Padar- thanand Ji was arriving the next day to give knowledge and I wanted to get it. "People who want peace get it," says Guru Maharaj Ji. Boy, did I want it! But apparently I was going to have to wait. My sister Mary hinted darkly about the vanity of my previous attempts to reach God. Regional Secretary John MacGregor explained what a great bar subtle spiritual egos like mine were to fully appreciating the knowledge.

Then the marvellous Mahatma arrived. He is a true religious fanatic. Brought up in a devoted Indian family, he began to seek for knowledge at the age of ten. He has been . to many gurus in India, spending his time massaging them, sitting at their feet, prostrating, etc., trying to wrest their secrets from them. But he maintains they were all cheaters except Guru Maharaj Ji. Now at the ripe age of 22, he was Guru Maharaj Ji's only mahatma in Australia, and dispenses the priceless knowledge.

I fell in love with him at first sight. But I was kept from him by his minions. He was surrounded by a tight web of security, grim

faced young men in suits keeping the masses at bay. Only those chosen by the Regional Secretary were allowed to enquire for knowledge - generally those who had attended 30 satsangs and done plenty of service.

Satsang occurs every night for two hours. People who have taken knowledge, ie. premies, can give satsang by Guru Maharaj Ji's grace. Satsang means "company of truth". Anything they say is true. It is not their words, but Guru Maharaj Ji speaking through them.

Service is a remarkable institution, of which more later. It seems to mainly refer to doing what DLM authorities tell you to do, especially such things as cleaning toilets, washing cars, etc… Regional Secretaries are often heard to sigh that they wished their service was not the difficult one of telling people what to do, but rather the easy one of doing what one is told.

John MacGregor explained to us waiters that by keeping us from knowledge he was simply acting as the hands of Guru Maharaj Ji. Finally the Mahatma emerged. I begged for knowledge (and I mean begged). He explained how Guru Maharaj Ji gave practical experience. Anything I had had before was simply theory. O.K. I thought, why not? I must belong. Truth after all does not lie in words.

The Mahatma continued to say that I must attend a lot of satsang to get the theory of knowledge before I could get the practical. And of course the service.

The DLM spiel is that this knowledge is purely an experience - you don't have to change your beliefs to get it. But in fact knowledge depends upon accepting a network of beliefs - or at least accepting that the network of beliefs is not to be criticised. And one of those beliefs is that the network does not in fact exist. The price of knowledge is thus to accept doublethink.

I saw the film Who is Guru Maharaj Ji? that night - the night of his Second Coming which never happened. Thousands of dollars and an extraordinary amount of organisation and energy was put into preparing for the Second Coming in October 1973. Tickets were being sold at the Rainbow Theatre in Adelaide and the Mahatma got "messages" to hire Memorial Drive - a huge, open air stadium in Adelaide - but the Secretary, a more moderate man, hired the Adelaide Town Hall. Which turned out to be less than a quarter full.

Premies were doing service 24 hours a day. The World Peace Corps was the official organisation for getting everyone together. Here the name Neville Acland must not go unmentioned. I am very fond of Neville. He is the most extraordinarily convincing person I have ever met. He arrived in Melbourne in early 1973 after experiencing DLM organisation in England. He was a heroin pusher who took knowledge at the very heart of DLM in Prem Nagar (City of Love), India.

Neville set up the World Peace Corps in Australia. Long hair was considered as manifestation of ego, as were beads, make up, and all trappings of hippiness. Any premie who did not wear a suit (male) or modest long dress (female) was a semi-premie or a hippy-premie or a freaked out-premie. No one was allowed to react to anything. For "react" read "be unwilling to follow the World Peace Corps way of life". Ego was the great barrier to realization of knowledge. Ego was crushed by obedience and celibacy.

David Lovejoy, National Secretary, wrote a version of the American Ashram Manual, and this manual of rules was more or less enforced in all ashrams. All money earned by premies went to DLM, which ran the ashrams financially. Each ashram had a housemother and a secretary. The DLM treasurers, according to Mahatma Padarthanand, had to be misers. And they were, But they still overspent, and by the time of the Second Coming DLM was heavily in debt. Immediately after the Second Coming didn't occur, the migration to America for Millenium '73 on November 7, 8 and 9 at the Houston Astrodome began.

It was a debacle. Premies expected that they would all return as mahatmas, or that flying saucers would come down, or that the end of the world would occur, or that Guru Maharaj Ji would perform a great miracle which would prove to the whole world that he was the Lord of the Universe. All that happened was that Guru Maharaj Ji sat on a huge stage and was adored by the thousands of premies present. Before Millenium my sister Cathy had been typing day and night in the Melbourne office. After Millenium there was nothing to do. The ashram system quickly began to crumble. Soon there were only one or two ashrams in each city. But it remained part of the official mythology that only the ashram premie was "really" practising knowledge. They were the "strong premies". Others weren't so strong.

But I was convinced. I began to push all other attachments from my mind. It was too much for' Maggie. She took David and left.

I realized that God was One, Truth was One, Devotion was One, and Guru Maharaj Ji was IT. I spent the last of my money on a plane fare to Melbourne following Mahatma Ji. I had spent all my life in fear and hate and I was going to get rid of it by hook or by crook. Everything else hadn't worked and if the Lord of the Universe couldn't save me, who could?

I went to the Divine Residence in Melbourne, walked past security and astonished premies muttering "Where there's a will there's a way", went into the Mahatmas room and demanded knowledge. He said 'he would know when I was ready, that I had to trust him. I said I wasn't leaving his side until he gave me knowledge. Time passed. He went to sing Arti with the premies (devotional song worshipping Guru Maharaj Ji as God. "Creator, preserver, destroyer, bow their heads and pray to you", etc.). After Arti he ordered me to leave the Divine Residence. I wouldn't. He went into the bathroom. And then he had me. Because I wouldn't follow him there. After a while he poked his head out grinning and told me it would be more comfortable for me if I sat down.

The premies were trying to persuade me to go. They got me a chair and something to eat. I was caught in the depths of a terrible fear and despair. I wanted Guru Maharaj Ji to get me out of it. They talked and talked to me, mostly very gently, sometimes a bit rough. Mahatma Ji stayed in the bathroom.

Eventually they were just telling me to go. But I wouldn't. Then a light seemed to pierce the darkness. Mahatma Ji had said I should trust him rather than my own judgement. And he wanted me to go. I got up and walked out. And suddenly it was spring. I had surrendered to Guru Maharaj Ji. Everything was alright.

I spent the next two months doing full time service in DLM's Soul Food Shop. In this way I legally kept out of the thing in DLM that was most obnoxious to me - World Peace Corps. WPC organised service for people - like cleaning offices, cars, etc., arranging flowers for the satsang hall, doing nursery for children during satsang (very hateful to me - even in the Catholic church children are allowed into mass), and doing security. Security involved keeping a watch on DLM property and personnel, making sure they were undamaged.

In London, and I believe in Sydney, security personnel did karate training. In India the WPC wore uniforms and did goosestep marches in formaiion. Guru Maharaj Ji had a general's uniform which he wore in his position as WPC Commander- in-Chief.

I wouldn't have minded security so much if it hadn't been regarded as compulsory - of course if it weren't compulsory no one would do it. To do this obnoxious sort of stuff, however, was regarded as the ego-crushing necessary to prepare one for knowledge.

I was really blissing out on Guru Maharaj Ji. I was in a safe environment where I could sing to him, love him, think about him, talk about him, and know that he was looking after me and I didn't have to be afraid of anything. Soon the confidence in myself that I had lost began to return. "At the Feet of the Master you" can really let it go."

Finally it was Christmas and Mahatma Ji came. I spent ten glorious days sitting at his feet and soaking the vibes and on December 27 I took knowledge. I hadn't thought much about knowledge* - it was Guru Maharaj Ji I was interested in. Four meditation techniques are revealed. I am prepared to reveal them to anyone who wants them (the punishment for this is that I shall come back as a bat in my next lifetime. I am a spiritual murderer both of myself and the person to whom I reveal the techniques. Anyone who revealed the techniques would return as a bat because bats excrete from their mouths. Just as they had given forth only evil words in this life, so they would give forth excrement in the next. And they would be condemned to live blind in the darkness).

Light, music, word and nectar are said to be revealed. And, true enough, they are revealed, though the word is a tricky one. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God". This word is unspeakable, and it is the name of God, the origin of all things. It is a mystery mentioned in nearly all scriptures. Someone who has realized knowledge is supposed to be "on the word" all the time.

A familiar catchphrase in DLM is "Get on the word". Its motive is generally to shut someone up.

It is impossible to both speak and do the word technique at the same time.

The one. that really got me was the light. I am susceptible to visions, in the same way that other people are susceptible to writing poems, or having good fucks, or kicking goals in football; but this light really astounded me. I seemed to be zooming through a vast kaleidoscopic space rather similar to the one at the end of 2001. Then I saw a bright white sun which came closer and closer until it filled my whole vision. It was searingly bright. "Brighter than a million suns" is how they usually describe it, and it certainly seems like that. For a few seconds I saw Guru Maharaj ji's face in the middle of it.

As soon as I had knowledge I went to Adelaide and started to meditate. I kept away from the ashramers and service addicts. A lot of premies aren't really very interested in meditating. They take the light as proof of Guru Maharaj Ji's Godhead and then simply fit into the hierarchy of DLM as obedient servants.

Soon, however, I began to feel that I had a mission to change DLM, and I felt I would have Guru Maharaj Ji's blessing to do it. I had long conversations with an old friend, Errol Vieth, who had been Regional Secretary of Queensland but had dropped out of the ashram system and was very angry about the unfeeling stupidity of the most orthodox premies.

I began to give revolutionary satsang, deliberately contradicting DLM cliches. One night I came in with a toy tommy gun, shot down security and administration, said "fuck" and "cunt" in the satsang chair, denounced Neville as a power mad and revealed (what was true) that the Regional Secretary had been fucking on the sly with my sister (Sorry, kids. But Mahatma Ji said that nothing is hidden.)

I was carted out bodily and ejected. Then two security guards stayed outside with me to stop me going back in.

I was in a curious position. I couldn't do without Guru Maharaj Ji, but I refused to believe that he would think I was wrong. The "strong premies" couldn't understand me at all. I thought they might understand some of it, they didn't seem to understand a

bit. This was because the ' existence of a guru setup is dependant on a fixed hierarchy and fixed rules and regulations. This is a fact I could not, or would not come to terms with.

By this time I was having some very high meditations. The one to get over all my problems seemed, was to be a mahatma. 1 I would bypass the bureaucracy. I began to believe I was a mahatma and offered to give people knowledge. Satsang was a circus at this time. The premies loved performances. The Regional Secretary took a holiday in the courntry. But no one really believed me, even myself. Sometimes I would be as high as a kite, believing myself to be God-realized. Then at other times I would be in darkest despair.

Then Bal Bhagwan Ji arrived.

Guru Maharaj Ji has three brothers, Bal Bhagwan Ji, Bhole Ji, and Raja Ji, who were supposed to be, respectively, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer, and Brahma the creator, the three members of the Hindu ruling trinity of Gods. Mata Ji, their mother, was the Holy Mother of Creation (like Mother Mary, Kali, etc.), and Guru Maharaj Ji was the Father of All, supposedly never previously incarnated. Bal Bhagwan Ji, or Vishnu, was the one who had incarnated as Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, etc.

It was of immense importance to me that Jesus was coming to Adelaide! The day of his arrival I was counting the minutes to his touchdown. Nothing could hold me down. As he walked through the airport lounge. I ran mesmerised Up to him and for a few giddy seconds was walking alongside him saying "Hello, I love you. Hello, I love you". He didn't say anything. I

don't suppose I would have either, in his position.

I raced to the ashram and got there before him, then followed right on his heels past security, but was stopped at the door by a glance from Mahatma Padarthanand.

I went away, but couldn't stop thinking about him. At satsang, I heard he called for Errol. I was cut to the quick. I wanted him to call for me. I raced to the ashram and tried to get in. The security men held me down. I was calling out "Bal Bhagwan Ji, Bal Bhagwan Ji, call off your thugs. Bal Bhagwan Ji, Bal Bhagwan Ji, Bal Bhagwan Ji".

Mahatma radarthanand came out and took me in. I was muttering "Thank you, thank you", over and over. He was sitting on a couch.

I prostrated and kissed his feet.

He was giving Errol a dressing down. "No society is perfect … Criticism of the existing order does no good … Love is the only way to change things, etc…"

It was unreal. I felt like I was in a time warp. I had a choice between me and him.

He turned to me. I said I didn't want to criticise, I just wanted to give everything to him. He said that what Descartes said was not true - it was not "I think, therefore I am", but "I am, therefore I think".

I asked about being a mahatma.

I said I saw people in pain and wanted to help them. He said that then I must lead them to knowledge. I was married so I could not be a mahatma. He got me to read a passage in the Bible where Simon Magus offers the apostles money if they will give him the power to give knowledge. The apostles condemn him.

Through all this I was in an extraordinary state of calm and bliss. He was my Lord. That was all. Next morning when I woke up I decided I had to leave DLM.

I went and spoke to Errol. After we had talked for a while we decided we had both been Judases to Guru: Maharaj Ji.

Bal Bhagwan Ji gave satsang the next two nights. I was entranced by him - completely in a dream. His every gesture held worlds of meaning. He was God. My heart overflowed with love. He shone with radiant radiant light.

Later on I kissed his feet and he spoke with me again. He laughingly called me a lawbreaker and I melted in bliss. When we were singing songs to him at satsang he looked at me and laughed, and pointed me out to Mahatma Rajesh- war. Nothing more wonderful had ever happened to me in my whole life.

From then on my whole life was Guru Maharaj Ji. Maggie had. returned to me and decided to take knowledge. But I really didn't care about her at all. I had one consuming passion. I meditatecf and meditated. I did everything I was supposed to do, even surrendered my mind into believing everything I was supposed to believe. Bliss became my only concern. I was convinced that Guru Maharaj Ji could lead me to a state where I would experience nothing but bliss, where there would be an end of freak outs, fear and pain.

My devotion reached fever pitch.

I became a perfect premie. Some premies I was living with were smoking dope, and I called the police on them. Fortunately nothing came of it. But that brought a sudden halt to things. I knew I had done the wrong thing. Maggie decided to leave me again.

So now I was alone with Guru Maharaj Ji, and a great pain began to grow in me, and as I meditated that would be all that was there. At Guru Puja with all the premies together in Melbourne I was rocketed very high, and that great gaping hole became unbearable. I cried all during one programme. We all expected Guru Maharaj Ji to be there, but he wasn't.

I began to write to Guru Maharaj Ji, begging him for samadhi, which is supposed to be the ultimate state of bliss. I had by now joined a Divine Light Centre, and it was nothing but a centre of bad vibes. Premies were continually ordering each other to do things, and trying to get each other to obey rules. The food we were given was based on some ridiculous health food trip. Everyone was supposed to be earning as much money as possible, and doing either full time service or having a full time job. It was compulsory to go propagating on Saturday mornings, ie. ram DLM propaganda down Saturday shoppers' throats. Also one was supposed to go jumbling, ie. knocking door to door to collect old clothes etc., to sell in Divine Sales, an enterprise which was blessed by Guru Maharaj Ji.

I was now losing control of myself - all I was conscious of was pain and the bliss that could fill it. I spent more and more time in the meditating room - that was the only escape from service. I was finding it totally impossible to get a job. I kept remembering Bal Bhagwan Ji's words - "We are in the world not to talk of the world, but to talk of that power and energy". I wanted liberation.

Then one night I was talking about everything that Bal Bhagwan Ji and Mahatma Rajeshwar had said and I suddenly realized that I thought it was a pack of lies. There was something else that was bothering me - a particularly gross example of doublethink. Guru Maharaj Ji had married his secretary, a tall, blonde 24 year old westerner. The. stories went that his mother Mata Ji hadn't approved and had quarrelled with Guru Maharaj Ji. She had returned to India and so had Bal Bhagwan Ji and Bhole Ji. Some said that Mata Ji was dead, and that Guru Maharaj Ji's new wife Marolyn was now Holy Mother. Others said that Mata Ji had denounced Guru Maharaj Ji and said that Bal Bhagwan was now the Perfect Master - so that Indian DLM was now quite separate from western DLM. Raja Ji had remained in the west because he too had married a westerner and was spending all his time honeymooning.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Guru Maharaj Ji had sent out a letter declaring all agya (commands) of Holy Family to be null and void unless confirmed by him. Mata Ji had made an attempt to recall all mahatmas to India. Some had gone, some hadn't. All pictures of Holy Family except of Guru Maharaj Ji and Marolyn were ordered to be taken down.

One night I walked out of the centre determined never to return.

I was stopped by a cop who asked my name and address. I thought that perhaps Guru Maharaj Ji's power over me was now so great that I would never get away. I contemplated suicide or, less drastically, putting myself in mental hospital. I returned and spent - all next day in bed. Next night I couldn't listen to satsang. I went out with Maggie to some old friends' place and had the best time I had had in … ten million years. I started to feel as though I had been spending time in a lunatic asylum, and maybe my cure was imminent - I would soon be out of it.

One day I went into the hippy house next door. There was no one home, so I put on Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. I listened to "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Gates of Eden", "It's Alright Ma" and "It's All Over Now Baby Blue", and I started to cry and cry and cry. And then I was dancing through the house, laughing and crying.

"The vagabond who's knocking at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore,
Strike another match Start anew
'Cause it's all over now, baby blue."

I had been begging for samadhi and now I had it. But it wasn't what I had thought. I had never needed Guru Maharaj Ji in the first place, or his heaven. The only thing keeping me out of heaven was my trying to get into it.

There wasn't any samadhi. Samadhi is illusion. The word was unspeakable alright. The name of God was nothing. There was no God.

I was happy. I was free. And suddenly that pain was gone. And all I had to do was play. I had been trying to conquer my mind, but all the time it was my mind conquering my mind. I had been trying to surrender to Guru Maharaj Ji because I thought that only he could save me. But I didn't need to be saved. I was created perfect and had always been perfect. The mind is all-powerful. If it thinks I am perfect, I am. If it doesn't, I am not. x

So now I've stopped going to satsang and stopped doing service. It was a very wierd trip. I hope I don't ever have to do anything like it again.

There is nothing fantastic about so called religious experience. "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." The bigger your God, the bigger your hell.

"This knowledge is not chocolate."
- Mahatma Padarthanand Ji.