Prem Rawat Says "Live This Moment"
But There's No Way He Could Actually Paddle A Canoe
This Visions International short film was sold on a Video CD distributed at Élan Vital "events" and was produced in 1996. The visuals are of a canoe being paddled down a golden river with many reflections and refractions of light while Prem Rawat emotes over a "reflective" piano and strings soundtrack. Rawat's voice-over continues for the whole seven minutes. A transcript cannot do justice to his unique delivery and voice.
Rawat must be heard to gain some understanding of his talents and how despite the millions of dollars donated by his 1970's followers and spent on 30 years' efforts in "propagation" ie recruitment, the numbers of his followers today are far fewer than they were 30 years before. The problem is that he demands that he be the centre of outreach and his voice is still shrill after 25 years in the West, his command of English is also poor despite it being his main language since 1971 and his ability to speak extemperaneously is also poor.
The concise overt version of his message is trite "the purpose of life is to enjoy it" but the subtext is that Prem Rawat aka Maharaji is the giver of the gift of life and you owe him gratitude and worship. Ironically, Prem Rawat flabbily obese as he is, who doesn't even open his own car doors or adjust his own microphone stand, could never paddle such a canoe.
Prem Rawat: "I don't know how many times people have actually heard it said life is a gift and yet everything that we do, everything that happens,
we don't always see it that way. We hear that life is precious but in the daily routine of people, people, people everywhere.
In the daily routine of trying to cope, maybe we forget. And every morning that that alarm clock has to go off to wake us up. And every morning in our minds our daily routine
going through we know, we know what's going to happen. We know what we want to happen. We know I must go to the bus stop. I must get my car. I must go to my office.
I must go my shop. I must go … and all these musts that we place in front of our existence."
Prem Rawat: "This river of existence and it's gliding by and there are people who've got their hands in the water saying "Faster, I need to go faster" Why are you speeding up? Don't you know what's waiting for you at the end of this visit? It's obvious. But they want to accelerate it and time will not let them accelerate it. Time is a wonderful thing, it goes by really fast, it goes by really slow but it doesn't let you go faster than it or slower than it. You're caught, caught on this little boat and it is sailing down and it won't go any faster than it has to and it won't go any slower than it has to. And it makes this passage. The destination of this journey is not at the end, it's now. It's within. The purpose of this journey is not to go from point A to point B but it is to enjoy every fractional moment between those two points."
Prem Rawat: "The simple innocence of life. To wake up in the morning and be happy, for absolutely no reason at all. That's simple innocence. To be alive and to be glad to be alive. To be conscious, to be conscious of enjoyment. To be conscious of now. That is when the journey begins to be beautiful. That's when you begin to understand what simplicity is. That's when you begin to understand that this is a gift. A gift. Live this moment, every moment as consciously as you can and enjoy it. The point of it is to enjoy."
