Hi Neville,

I can't agree more.  The spin that premies place on that bit of revisionism is an amazing bit of congitive dissonance.  Since I spent some time reading the Wiki article talk pages, I'm convinced that premies have grown to believe the revised version:  that Rawat never even implied he was God.  That's absurd!

That doesn't excuse premies' denials about Maharaji saying he was God and that he was revealing God, however.  And it had nothing to do with the Indian trappings.  Personally, I couldn't stand the Indian trappings and was glad when things got less hindi and more westernized, even in the mid to late 70s.  I heard a lot of  satsang that was geared toward westerners as early as 1975 when I got involved.  When I was an aspirant in 1975, there were all kinds of scriptural references made to Jesus and to Holy Name or Word, and the famous Bible quotes.  I remember when the Aquarian Gospel was recommended reading material -- lots and lots of premies had that book and handed them to aspirants to read.  So that blows the hindu trappings rationalization.  In fact, the Mahatmas made a lot of references to the Bible.  They didn't come over here from India saying Maharaji was giving away the same "Knowledge" as Krishna gave, they compared him to Jesus!  So, there you go.

I've been pondering your post today and it dawned on me that except for a minority of premies, Maharaji never held knowledge sessions!  Well duh, Cynthia!  When did Prem Rawat ever teach anyone any K techniques?!?  Okay, he did hold some Knowledge Reviews in the 80s.  He held some K sessions in the 90s, but that wasn't the norm.

There is no question in my mind that we were told that Maharaji was "revealing," God inside us, which he never actually revealed personally (that was magical thinking).  It was a sort of transference of Maharaji's "power" to the Mahatma or Initiator that was also well rationalized through the use of persuasion.

In the aspirant programs of the 70s a huge question for some aspirants was just how did Maharaj's power to reveal this Knowledge of all knowledges come from Maharaji (The Lord, the "revealer") to the intermediary (Mahatma/Initiator) to a person in the K session?  That was a big leap of logic to overcome for premies and they (we) succeeded through rationalization.  It took a leap of faith, too and Maharaji said hundreds of times that premies should have faith in him and his grace.

The pat answer was that Maharaji  gave permission to Mahatmas/Inititators, but it went deeper than that once an aspirant was approaching Knowledge Selection time.  The big question was how Maharaji, the god-in-a-bod, who had all this immense power, then pass it along to an aspirant through a stand-in?   Of course, the right answer had to be Grace, and who had Grace but the Maharaji, the Lord?  Perfect circular thinking.

Worse than that, Maharaji told us that "Guru Maharaj Ji was inside of us."  Or, that the experience of Knowledge was Maharaji within inside of us.  I remember him saying that quite a few times.  Then there was the ritual of "Holy Breath" in the premie's first darshan line.  What was that all about if not sealing the devotee/Lord relationship after receiving K?  (Btw, I never felt a thing when I got my Holy Breath, and figured he was blowing so many times he missed me!)  LOL! 

Just a few thoughts.

I hope you're well, Nev,

Cynthia