Divine Light Mission

The Divine Light Mission (Divya Sandesh Parishad; DLM) was an organization founded in 1960 by guru Hans Ji Maharaj for his following in northern India.[2] As Rawat grew older, he began to take a more active role in the movement and, when he turned sixteen, following the financially disastrous Millennium '73 festival, he took administrative control of the US branch.By 1973, DLM was operating in 37 countries, tens of thousands of people had been initiated (become premies) and several hundred centers and dozens of ashrams formed in the U.S. and the UK.[23][24] When local members heard of the incident they notified Rawat in Los Angeles who extended his regrets and condolences to Pat Halley's family, and requested that the DLM conduct a full investigation.[30] According to Marc Galanter, the members at a festival in Orlando, Florida "looked as though they had been drawn from the graduate campus of a large university—bright, not too carefully groomed, casually dressed.[33] In June 1973, the British DLM, with Prem Rawat's mother acting on behalf of her son, organized the "Festival of Love" at Alexandra Palace in London.While it drew thousands of attendees, Rawat began receiving hostile press coverage, partly due to his showing up late, or not at all, at scheduled appearances.[56] Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III visited the festival and later remarked that while the premies inside were looking happy the ones outside were arguing with Jesus Freaks and Hare Krishnas.The use of advanced technologies to ensure pollution-free air, Rennie Davis told a journalist, would be a practical demonstration of what it means to have Heaven on Earth.[60] Incorporation papers for the formation of the "City of Love and Light Unlimited, Inc." were filed in Colorado in 1974, and there was a failed attempt in 1975 to build the community near San Antonio, Texas.[66] DLM's post-Millennium financial troubles forced it to close ashrams, sell its printing business and real estate, and to drop the lease on its IBM computer.[83] By the end of the 1970s, the movement had lost an estimated 80% of its followers in the U.S.[84] Bromley and Hammond attribute the decline of groups including the Divine Light Mission to internal factors, but also in part to the news media's "discrediting reports about their activities", accounts which created a "wide-spread public perception of 'mind control' and other 'cult' stereotypes.According to Ron Geaves, a religious scholar who has been associated with the teachings of Prem Rawat for the last thirty years:[97] Maharaji has chosen a route of perpetual transformation in which organizational forms are created and utilized and then destroyed, thus providing flexibility to deal with rapidly changing social attitudes, to provide pragmatic solutions to internal problems, and above all to keep his students focused on the core message rather than the peripheral requirements of organizational forms.He is also a politician and former Union Minister in India, and founded Manav Utthan Sewa Samiti, which he describes as "an all-India registered voluntary social welfare and charitable organization", that is also "making freely available the spiritual Knowledge which is the essence of all religions.[64][115] According to scholars Foss and van der Lans, the teachings of Hans Ji Maharaj were minimized after 1975, and followers were expected to accept Prem Rawat as their personal savior.[118] A 1981 article based on the Dutch branch of the Divine Light Mission, stated that the DLM had little philosophical background and that all its central creeds and tenets were described in the song associated with the Hindu ritual called aarti."[127]According to Carroll Stoner and Jo Anne Parke, when they visited an ashram the premies "appeared to be in control of their own lives and seemed to be achieving some measure of peace as a by-product of a lifestyle they feel is constructive and healthy".They came from middle-class backgrounds, all were white and had attended an average of 1.5 years of college, similar to the Hare Krishna sample, though DLM members were less likely to have come from broken homes.Compared to the college students, fewer DLM members had had religious upbringings and they tended to have had worse family experiences though only 17% came from "broken homes".[68] One former accountant for the DLM said that new followers were asked to turn over their entire savings, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in several cases their families contested the donations.[131][132] The Divine Light Mission began creating ashrams in India in the 1960s, starting with a small one in Rajasthan and a larger one called Satlok ("Place of Truth") between Delhi and Haridwar.[133] Khushwant Singh, who visited the Mission's headquarters in Delhi in 1973 described it as being like a fortress with 8-foot (2.4 m)-high walls, an iron grilled gate enclosing a courtyard and a complex of buildings capable of housing 100 and with the capacity to feed 50,000 visitors on special occasions.[14][63][64][137] Followers wishing to stay in the ashrams established by Rawat were required to fill out detailed applications that focused on their trust funds, insurance policies, and other assets.[152] A study of terms used in U.S. newspapers and news magazines, which examined the media's failure to use the more neutral terminology favored by social scientists, found that the Divine Light Mission was referred to as a "sect" in 10.3% of articles, as a "cult" in 24.1%, and as both in 13.8%.In 1972, in Argentina, as part of a crackdown on small religious groups by the military junta, 87 members of the DLM were arrested in Mar del Plata on charges of using drugs and practising their faith.[158] Bromley and Hammond described the Divine Light Mission as belonging in a "medium tension category", among movements that were seen by the public as peculiar rather than threatening, and to which society responded with watchfulness and ostracism."[159] Ron Geaves states that the Divine Light Mission "developed into a vigorous new religious movement with its own specific traits that included characteristics of a contemporary North Indian Sant panth (sectarian institution) and nirguna bhakti was combined with intense reverence for the living satguru and millennial expectations of the western counter-culture."[71] According to sociologist Pilarzyk the youth culture response – mainly from a decidedly leftist political perspective – was somewhat ambiguous, combining indifference with some instances of overt hostility.Pilarzyk mentioned that these criticisms usually focused on the perceived phoniness of the "blissed-out premies", the "hocuspocus" aspects of the meditation, and the "materialistic fixations" and physical condition of the guru.These accounts are described by Pilarzyk as being quite negative and full of distortions from the DLM's adherents point of view and drawing responses from them that varied from bewilderment and amusement to extreme defensiveness.