Tim Freke and Prem Rawat: Two Monologues Passing In the Night

There's a saying I heard of in a detective story. "If you're playing in a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." Tim Freke should have looked around the table and noticed he was alone with Prem Rawat and his entourage. A better description would be Stalin's, Tim was the "useful idiot" a well-meaning stooge being used to make Rawat look good. He seemed to respect Rawat, he seemed to believe he was some sort of evolved soul and he thought he was in a dialogue. Most of the long conversation is painful, their world views are so far apart as to be unbridgeable. I later learnt that Freke was well aware of Rawat's past and had even been involved in Divine Light Mission before his disillusionment but looks for an exchange of views not a war of words.

Tim Freke conned by Prem Rawat

When Freke suggests an exercise for consciousness expansion he considers meaningful "Look into each other's eyes and to sit there often in silence or music playing for like three minutes and then move on to another person another 3 minutes and then another person and another person and another person and another person and I think there's something about seeing it, seeing it in yourself and there's something about seeing it when you look at like I'm looking at your face now but the thing I'm connecting with just personally I can't see it is your psyche is your soul is your the thing which is looking back and then to slip into that place where there's one of us looking at itself is such a and and what I see there is the feeling this this what I call big love. It's like this enormous, it's just opens up quite naturally when we connect in that in that really deep way with just and it gets experiential is like you know for me when I do that there's like not forget every philosophy now just forget all that just looking each other don't think about it just looking each other's eyes and see what's looking back at you and you know, it's like that." Rawat quickly deflects the topic and moves on to people who hate each other and the dire state of the world. But Freke knows better. He's read Rosling, he knows how billions of human lives have improved in the last 60 years (and this was the most important thing mentioned but ignored) so Rawat leaves that topic.

From 1966 to 1983/84 (almost 20 years) Prem Rawat was known as the Perfect Master and the Lord of the Universe, he publicly claimed to be the Perfect Master who was also the Incarnation of God and encouraged people to give him gifts because the Perfect Master should live in luxury and never once hinted that this wasn't true. He preached a very simplistic Sant Mat form of the Indian religion that he disparages here and despite media criticism never once hinted there was another story. His followers stressed his Divinity and their need to make his life as luxurious as the Lord of the Universe deserved. At least in this, there was no pretence.

At Freke's insistence Rawat, reveals his story about this black hole in his career. Its not one that stands up to any scrutiny and Rawat certainly glosses over a 15 to 20 year period in his life as if it lasted a few days, when on his own admission, he was playing a role as a Perfect Master and basing his career on it and gaining his fortune on it and Freke is too respectful or a nice guy to cut his story to pieces, unless his cross-examination ended up in pieces on the cutting room floor. Anyway here it is:


TF: So I want to ask you I want to ask you if if you would indulge me I want to ask you about you've led this incredible life and I read your other book about your life and you grew up in Dehra Dun, which was funnily enough my father was in Dehra Dun during after the war as part of the Raj before it went so I grew up hearing stories of Dehra Dun which he loved and so it's kind of mythic place for me, and then you came across here Glastonbury Festival you were 12 something young 71 and I know people who were there and two people who I knew were at the festival who became followers then of you and I I look at you now and I look at you then there's big change and I'm wondering what the real question I wondered, just as someone who's interested in human beings, is what was happening for you then when you're on the big stage and not not at Glastonbury festival, but all of that period of your life where you're being seen in this way as this projecting that really of this divine being and now here we are having a chat and I'm talking to you. It's like what was happening for you when you were all of these people were adoring you and like what's that like? what was inside you? and why did you change it?

PR: Well, the adoration has to be not for me, the adoration has to be for the infinite in them.

Tim Freke conned by Prem Rawat

TF: But it was being directed very much at you

PR: Of course and I realized that that is transitory, something happens and that goes away. That's not my point that I had come to get adored. I'm looking for a, "by the way guys you know I'm looking for some adoration here and you can go ahead and adore me," no, I wanted them to have a incredible, fulfilling experience in their life because I truly understood that this life is an opportunity to experience something, to know the self and to experience the divine and they need to do that

TF: So when it was happening for you I mean you're young I mean what teens and 20s and that's a different time obviously what? what is what it did. How did you see yourself? Did you see yourself in the way that you projected yourself or did is it? Is it something which you woke up from and yourself and just went what am I saying this is this is not the way to go with this or was it something

PR: no the saying never changed, the saying stays the same, what changed was this. I had just come from India and literally everybody around and it was also the period of time where it was like look towards the east for answers (TF: it definitely was) so I was the perfectly situated for that (TF: right) Here I had come from the East and the young boy who has come with this message and everything else and we will sort this out by literally taking on a part of a behaviour that had nothing to do with knowing yourself (TF: yep) nor it had anything to do with experiencing the divine. (TF: yeah) It was literally Indian religion. (TF: yeah) And I said this has got to go because we have to respect every religion, every human being the way they want to be, we are not going to impose how they should be, how they should behave. This is up to them. Let's give them the information. Let's give them the Knowledge of the self and they will make the decisions that they need.

Tim Freke conned by Prem Rawat

TF: So I think I think the question I'm trying to get that's beautifully put I really admire that immensely, it reminds me of Krishnamurti (PR: ha ha ha) you know Krishnamurti (PR: yes yes) yes so it reminds me of his story in a way that same kind of being prepared to be the Saviour and then going no I'm doing something else. I guess the question I want to is like when I was watching some videos from that time when I was reading after I read your book and looking at the difference. Thinking that's interesting, that journey that you've made its a huge journey. At that time did you believe your own hype or not?

PR: I believed in my heart.

TF: I mean did about the you know the (PR: No) the whole Perfect Master and all the (PR: Look) the Lord of the Universe and

PR: I had to go to school every day.

TF: No, I mean when you were here, here, when you were here (PR: no no, but in India too) Yeah yeah of course

PR: I was already hailed a perfect master (TF: okay) and I have to go to school (TF: right) and I was no Perfect Master in school (TF: right, right) so already this duality existed (TF: Ah Hah) where you could be and you couldn't be (TF: okay) so I come out, I come home, I'm not a Perfect Master, my mother is telling me, you didn't do this, you didn't do this do this do this (TF: right right right) I go in on weekends or on school holidays out there and there's thousands of people cheering and going yay yeah yeah of course you are and I was like well which one is it? Is it that one? or is it that one? (TF: yeah) See, and I realized I have to be me (TF: and say what) I wasn't a student nor I was the Perfect Master (TF: right) but I but I was a Master (TF: right okay) that talked about perfectness. (TF: OK yeah yeah yeah) and its as simple as that (TF: yeah) and I said I need to take this message of peace to everyone (TF yeah) no holds barred. What are the limitations?

TF: What makes you do that? I mean so it's it's so admirable. I mean you seem to work incredibly hard. You've affected a huge number of people's lives. What is it that makes you do that?

TF: It comes from the heart. (TF: yeah it's the experience itself) and the strength to do it comes from the heart. (TF: Yeah, I understand) not the logic but the logic you start looking at it and go "Oh look at that terrible article. Oh look at that" I mean do you realize how many people were lying openly on those newspapers saying "oh he does this he does this," ((TF: yeah) none of it was true, I knew that


I have never read a newspaper article that was publishing lies about Rawat at any time throughout his career. There were some minor mistakes and they took the words of Rawat's minions far too seriously. See for yourself