There's saying I heard of in a detective story. "If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." Tim Freke shold 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 respected Rawat, he beleved he was some sort of evolved soul and he thought he was in a dialogue. Most of the long conversation is painful, like two teenagers showing off to each other, not understanding how mediocre their thinking is.

When Freke suggests an exercise for consciousness exapansion he thinks is 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 ate 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 so Rawat leaves that topic.

At Freke' insistence Rawat, at least, reveals his story about the black hole in his career. Its not one that stands up to any scrutiny and certainly glosses over a 15 year period in his life as if it was a few weeks, when on his own admission, he was playing a role and Freke is too respectful to cut his story to pieces, but 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 what you got in Dehra Dun, {Freke is referring to Rawat's childhood "realisation" of Knowledge which Freke thinks was a cosmic consciousness experience) 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 a 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.

TF: But it was being directed very much at you of.

PR: Of course and I realised 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? 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 every 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 (it definitely was) so I was the perfectly situated for that (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 (yep) nor it had anything to do with experiencing the divine. (yeah) It was literally Indian religion. (yeah) And I said this is 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.

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 (ha ha ha) you know Krishnamurti (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 (PR: Look) the Lord of the Universe and

PR: Look, I had to go to school every day.

TF: No, I mean when you were here here when you were here

PR: Oh no, but in India too

TF: Yeah of course

PR: I was alrady hailed as 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) already this duality existed 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 yeah yeah 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 realised I have to be me and (TF: and same one) 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 is 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?

PR: It comes from the heart. (TF: yeah it's the experience itself) and the strength to do it comes from the heart. (TF: Yeah, 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 realise 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

TF: that must be horrible.

PR: But where does the courage come? Because it takes courage to say no. I'm gonna brush that aside. That's not real. We need to do so much of that today because there's so much misinformation and we all as human beings not be not be in this dire threat of wars being created by world quote unquote leaders. We need to have the courage to bring out peace, we need the courage to bring out the best in every human being. That's what has to happen. Otherwise none of this stuff makes sense.

TF: Well, I think that hits it on the head. I don't know. I don't know if there's anything you want to add but that that felt like such a powerful idea to express a feeling to express and one that I don't know

PR: otherwise what is the point of all this evolution (TF: naturally) because to me, if I can bring the best out in another human being

TF: I feel the same I just feel the same

PR: then I've done something

TF: and there is something about that experience because for me the same I mean I done all crazy things really and none of it's made any sense in so many ways in the world isn't coming to this but once you've touched it is so beautiful that you just want to serve that and anything and that's why I say it feels like we're evolving into that that this maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part I'm open to that I can easily fool myself but it part of the feeling that all the clarity that seems to arise from me is we're evolving into this where this is becoming more and human being look how we you know we are not the same we're not Vikings and killing each other and marauding bands so much not by long stretch we have moved a long way and and what if the next jump that you couldn't imagine is into the very experience you're talking about is as if that we can we can turn into this unividuals is the word I use the individuals who are conscious of that thing which is in everything and how that changes their relationship

PR: to put it in layman's term, just in simple simple (TF: yeah yeah I love simple) each human being has the potential to bring the best out in the other person as we have the potential to bring the worst out in the other person. And we have already tried that many, many times that you can see what's happening in Ukraine. (TF: yeah) and everything else, you know, in in those days when they were Vikings and so on. So they were, they were killing, they were looting, they were doing this and that. The massive scale of looting people now is unparalleled, is unparalleled. And sometimes the Vikings would get tired, so they would take a little break. Now, this is 24/7. I mean, all of a sudden your bank account is gone. You know, somebody did something, and somebody did something, and some, I mean, it's just all the time. You look at all this weird news, and it's the poor people. And they are not getting the chance to come forward. When you look at how few people there are that are dying because of the lack of food, that we could easily, easily take care of, easily take care of. But why is it, that we're not doing it? We need to, for maybe for the first time, in the history of evolution, push the evolution in the direction of peace.

TF: You know, you know, I mean, I'm completely agree. Obviously, you know, I want that to happen. But I also think it is happening because, actually, we've reduced over the last 40 years poverty beyond, I mean, there's never been a time in history where there's been so little poverty, so little war. I mean, we we have moved forward immensely, you know, and and often you watch the news and you think it was the opposite. But if you actually look at the statistics, there's some fantastic work done by people like Rosling, where you can really, it's like we have moved so far. If we can carry that on,

PR: we definitely have done some incredible things. I mean we have eradicated some diseases and we have (TF: we really have) used tribe (???) (TF: Yeah) But the point of it is people are still suffering.

TF: That's very true.

PR: I was just in these countries, I was in India, I was in(TF: of course) S Africa, I was in Zimbabwe Zimbabwe and we really need to put together collective understanding to make this a better world. I mean? we decide politically, we decide on based on news which countries are going to get help and which countries matter and which countries don't matter, they're people that maybe they're not suffering because there's lack of food or lack of clean water but they're suffering because of something else and suffering is suffering

TF: the rich country suffer everyone's you know

PR: so yeah this is this is wonderful. I mean if this message gets out and people make that you know even if one person makes that change

TF: I love that about the you know saying it's it's the individual if you can change the individual then and and yeah that's what you're doing

PR: I'm trying (ha ha) still trying

TF: good for you when did you start how many years has it been

PR: well I started speaking about peace when I was 4 years old. I've seen the photo of that amazing photo and that was 9 years old when I started when my father passed away and I took over this responsibility.

TF: Wow. Well it's been a real delight. Thank you so much for sharing this time and your feeling.