Windows In Time - 1989
Prem Rawat Looks Through His "Windows In Time" - 1989
This video is a Visions International (a division of Elan Vital Inc) release. It was premiered at the 'Festival of Knowledge' in Miami, July 1989. It contains rare, historical footage from India and an optimistic and unrealistic view of Rawat's early career in the West ignoring the 100% critical and derisive media coverage of the 'fat boy Baskins Robbins guzzling guru with ulcers'. It is part of a series that includes Birthday Gift - 1988", "Evolution - 1989", "I Have This Knowledge - 1996", "Remembrance - 1996", Storyteller - 1997" and "Passages - 2001"
There is extensive footage of an "interview" with Prem Rawat in the back seat of a car from the late 80's and some of his 'students' providing revisionist spin on his early days in the West. It ends with an inspirational series of clips of his life over the song 'Teach Me Devotion' with late 1980's lyrics. I mean they would be inspirational if you had been a premie, a long term devotee of Rawat's.
Don't miss the super clear explanation of the commitment required to practise Knowledge, at least, that's what I think it's about.
You should update your browser as it does not support the video tag.
Q: "You're described as the bringer of Peace to the world. Now, how are you going to do that?"
A: "Well I think I'm doing that right now."
"Wherever just one spark of this Knowledge shines up, absolutely perfect. So that Knowledge I'm, I've got it here."
"Peace is within inside of us. The realisation is within inside of us but it has to be revealed. We do not know it."
"My interaction with Maharajiat that time. I mean he was umm 12 going on 13 when I met him and my interaction with him was immediately powerful. I felt that I was the 12 year old and he was the 22 year old and I felt uh that there was something in him that saw in me a need and a hunger and was able to respond to that and it took me a long time of listening to him and you know him explaining about Knowledge and the importance of Knowledge in my life but I think the thing that convinced me was him and he kept on pointing to an experience within me and that um he was just so deeply convincing that for me I didn't even question his age it wasn't until much later when I came back to the West and started explaining that Maharaji was a 13 year old Master that peoples' reactions made me remember that in fact you know he's a young child. I didn't experience that with him I experienced umm a mastery and a power and a depth and a perception that impressed me so deeply umm I just opened up and I felt OK lead me along."
" (???) He attracted attention, this was quite a unique phenomenon. The boy guru as the press called him."
He was a boy claiming to be the one and only guru so the press got that right.
"Five American people had received the Knowledge and were in America likewise hoping that he would visit there and when they heard he was in London bombarded him with phone calls saying please come over here and in the end he decided to go over there as well".
"Like I do remember in Los Angeles the day after he arrived, the the day he arrived at that little house on Alta Loma Terrace and he called his mother in India. He was talking in Hindi and I didn't understand the conversation I just knew that he was yelling and I just figured that that was normal cause usually phone calls to India it's always top volume anyway. And yet several years later he just told me about that that phone call it was at that point that he really, that's when he really confirmed the work that he was going to do because his mother was just saying "Look you've got to come back immediately, she was just saying what are you doing in Los Angeles your school is starting in a few days, you have to get on the next flight, you have to come back immediately, and it was like, she was, she was demanding, and ?? Maharaji was just his response and that was why he was yelling, was just no, he had work to do and that and that he knew that he couldn't wait any longer, he knew that he, he had to get started."
"Around the world, this peace is being given to people."
Around the world, thousands of people were being taught Rawat's father's techniques of meditation and religion, or something reasonably similar, by the Indian "mahatmas" but the majority of initiates were unimpressed by the results and sooner or later dropped out.
Maharaji is applauded wildly when leaving premises - Glen Whitaker towers over him by his side.
Q: "When you first arrived in the West, how did people react to your message?"
A: "There was a mixed, mixed reaction that people had. Some people were definitely looking for the Eastern religion and I think you're talking about very much the 60's era who were uh very much so looking towards the East whilst for some other people it wasn't a question of East and West but it was a question of something real, something beautiful and finding that and understanding that and examining that and I think that uh it was that is what really Knowledge always has represented is that deep feeling within regardless of East and West and all the other barriers that we tend to put on."
There was a mixed reaction but the overwhelming reaction was incredulous derision. The majority of "people looking toward the East" had a smiliar reaction. A tiny minority of the desperate and the gullible became involved with Rawat and his Divine Light Mission.
"Well I think that um I think I have grown and you know growing is one of those things it's like uh when you are 16 you can't wait to be 18 and then you one day you wake up and everybody says Happy Birthday, you're 18 today and then you realize it's not that much of a difference and I have to be 21 and the you wait till you're 21 and it's like we have our concepts of growth but we keep on growing, you never stop growing and it's just everything I feel just gets better and better and better. I think more and more as we can make this Knowledge available to people, more and more that we can learn ourselves what it means to us what we have learned from, from the past to incorporate that for the future and uh more and more people becoming clear about how important this is that this is taking place not to put it in the back of their lives or back of their heads but to always recognise and remember the importance of being alive now of having knowledge and to make this opportunity available to the many thousands and thousands of people around the world who could benefit from something like that."
"And I think the magic of the whole thing is that I'm alive and they're alive, that we can learn from each other, we can grow, we can experience and that when there is a teacher who can teach, who can show, this is an incredible interaction, the most human interaction there can be and most precious interaction because it is of love, it is of growth and because we are alive and because we are human beings this beautiful, magical thing has been made available to us that somebody can come and somebody can teach and somebody can make us grow and I think it's wonderful."
Q: "Maharaji recently you've been meeting groups of people who want to learn the Knowledge. What type of people are they and what attributes are you looking for in your students?"
A: "Well, these are people who want to know, who want to learn. That's the quality that I'm looking for in them, that their search is real for them and that's the only thing that I look for in people. I don't care who they are if they want to know and then that's a heartfelt feeling that they want to know and if I can convince myself that yes that is a heartfelt feeling not coming from just because they're curious then that interaction goes on further and further till the point that they can receive this Knowledge.
Q: "We hear the word 'devotion' mentioned. It has many meanings, what is meant by it here?"
A: "Well I think devotion to me always has meant and always will mean, a love. But a very different kind of love most of the other kind of loves we are so boring (???), physically love, family love, all this kind of love but then there is a different kind of love where I love you and you love me not because, there is no becauses in it, there is no qualification, it's a gift, it's a feeling, it's a tie, it's a bond without having anything to bind the bond together, that's devotion and to me that's what it has always meant, and that kind of devotion, to have, to feel, to enjoy, it's a gift, it's the most precious gift and that we can feel it, it's incredible, that we can have it, what can I say?"
"It's something so different, it's something so new, it's something so wonderful."
By now Rawat had been flogging his Knowledge and his divinity in the West for nearly 20 years and had been proclaiming that it was eternal. So it was hardly "so new" and after initial success in attracting followers the numebrs of had been dwindling to half it's peak by 1989 so it was not very wonderful either, at least not in the eyes of most of those who had tried it.
"Good morning everyone. How are you this dreary morning?" (Audience laughter)
"It's a commitment to yourself, very little commitment is towards me. I mean the commitment you're gonna make towards me is the care and concern the love and concern you have put in this thing I will just justly use this gift, you know, I will not abuse it. I will practise it, I wil honour it, I will cherish it because you have put that in it you know what I mean you don't take flowers from somebody and right in front of them you just rip them apart (audience laughter) I mean I think that's how you get punched in the face but ah just making it super clear."
The big, inspirational ballad "Teach Me Devotion" over scenes of Rawat's life.
Another more restrained, inspirational ballad "Where Would I Be?" over scenes of Rawat's hard work and studying, preparing himself for his role to bring peace to the World through wearing cowboy hats, driving speedboats, chewing gum while playing with toy gliders, learning to water-ski while wearing a singlet to hide his flabby body and demonstrating he is one of the worst swimmers on the planet.