Miscellaneous Video Clips
"… his own father, Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, who was of Royal Indian descent, formerly conveyed this message throughout India."
There are many gurus who preach and teach a message based in the Sant Mat tradition. Rawat's father was not the most successful one. His teachings and methods were simple. Rawat claims this 'message' is the Raj Yoga, "the King of all Yogas", The Yoga of all the yogas and Raj Vidya, the king of all knowledge. This meditation involves an hour per day of sitting under a blanket and poking your longest finger and thumb on your eyeballs and your index finger between the eyebrows, then pressing your thumbs in your ears with your palms on top of your head, then thinking about your breathing and then rolling your tongue backwards for 15 minutes each. Donating money is very good as well.
Maharaji does not teach a religion, dogma or doctrine. Nor is he the first person to impart this message. Many people have done so before him including his own father. Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, who was of royal Indian descent, formerly conveyed this message throughout India. Taking the initiative of travelling to his audiences, Shri Hans Ji Maharaj was able to reach people who could not come to him. Today Maharaji also travels to his audiences but he travels throughout the world. "
Rawatism is a religion and Rawat teaches a dogma. It is a simplistic dogma: Prem Rawat is the unique human being who can give the Gift of Inner Peace to other people. This requires a lengthy process of watching DVD's of him talking about it, called the Keys and accepting everything he says without doubts and then being taught and practising the meditation techniques he claims are the Raj Yoga, "the King of all Yogas", The Yoga of all the Yogas and Raj Vidya, the King of all Knowledge. These techniques are explained briefly below and more fully here. Rawat claims those who were the Satguru before him in the succession of Perfect Masters include Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Rawat's father and Rawat's father's guru. His eldest brother claims he is the only one.
Rawat's teachings are quite basic. One of the major doctrines is that he is not the first person he claims gave Knowledge of God, the Possibility of Peace or any of the other synonyms for this "best of all possible human experiences". He claims to be the Perfect Master or Satguru, the only Incarnation of God in a human body alive now. He is the last in a long line that includes his father, Jesus Christ, Krishna and Buddha and others. While he now only publicly speaks of himself as the "Master", his extravagant claims for his unique "gift" requires that he has divine powers. How else could such a simple, even ridiculous, method of "going within" produce the results he promises.Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, who was of Royal Indian descent, formerly conveyed this message throughout India. Taking the initiative of travelling to his audiences Shri Hans Ji Maharaj was able to reach people who could not come to him."
Rawatism is a religion and Rawat teaches a dogma. It is a simplistic dogma: Prem Rawat is the unique human being who can give the Gift of Inner Peace to other people. This requires a lengthy process of watching DVD's of him talking about it, called the Keys and accepting everything he says without doubts and then being taught and practising the meditation techniques he claims are the Raj Yoga, "the King of all Yogas", The Yoga of all the yogas and Raj Vidya, the king of all knowledge. This meditation involves an hour per day of sitting under a blanket and poking your longest finger and thumb on your eyeballs and your index finger between the eyebrows, then pressing your thumbs in your ears, then concentrating on your breathing and then rolling your tongue backwards for 15 minutes each. Donating money is very good as well.
By the 1990's Prem Rawat had begun to reminisce about his childhood. It transpired that he now remembered he was the one who attracted the crowds for his father, His Royal Highness Param Hans Ji Maharaj, whose organisation apparently couldn't raise a crowd advertising the Perfect Master of the time.
"I've been doing it since I was very young. My father, Shri Maharaji, he would have events, they would advertise them and they would do the whole thing and the time for the event would be coming and I would look out the window and see how many people were there and many times there was nobody there so I'd go out there and I'd start speaking and when I would start speaking they'd see this little bitty thing there speaking and they'd all start coming and when the hall was full my father would come and he would talk. It's not something I went to school for, it's a gift too, it's a gift that I can show you how to catch that magic when it happens."
Independant reports in the media agree that Rawat was a very poor public speaker. The evidence is there in the edited transcripts and recordings of his speeches. He has an unpleasant voice which often rises to a shriek, he loses track of his subject in a quagmire of non sequiturs and his speeches contain long pauses as he tries to think of something to say.
"Maharaji was born in Har(i)dwar, India in 1957. By the age of 6 he had already begun speaking to the large crowds that would gather to hear his father. When his father passed away, Maharaji became the sole person to make this message available though he was only 8 years old. He continued speaking to large audiences in India throughout his childhood. When he was just 13, Maharaji was invited to speak in London and Los Angeles. "
"Maharaji became the sole person to make this message available" is not the way it was described when it happened and for 20 years afterwards. He claimed that his dead father spoke to him, appeared to him and commanded him to be the Perfect Master, the Saviour, the only living Master, the Incarnation of the Master who come(s) in(to) the world again and again.
Many claim to be the sole person able to teach or produce peace in their followers. Indeed, after his mother became disllusioned with Rawat's teenage drunkenness and playboy lifestyle he was replaced as the Master by his eldest brother, who is an extremely successful "Godman" in India, a former Minister of the Indian government and a powerful politician in the Congress Party. Satpal Maharaj's message is the same message their father taught, the techniques of meditation he teaches are the same his father taught and most of his father's followers believe it is the eldest brother who has his father's blessings. There are numerous other teachers within the Sant tradition who were taught by Rawat's father's Master and who convey the complete, original teachings, not just what the child Rawat picked up in the few years before his father died.